Recalibration
by Quantum Holograph
Summary: When Harold Finch first built the Machine, he never expected it to call him "father." He also never expected it to one day knock on his door using a human avatar. AU of Season 4 finale.
1. Chapter 1

_Disclaimer: I do not own Person of Interest._

 **Summary:** _When Harold Finch first built the Machine, he never expected it to call him "father." He also never expected it to one day knock on his door using a human avatar. AU of Season 4 finale._

* * *

 **Recalibration**

* * *

Harold Finch fiddled with the hem of his sleeve in aimless depression. He was a bit of a nervous man—too brilliant for his own good, he knew. His good-willed attempts to protect the world had likely caused the deaths of just as many people as he had saved. The AI machine he had created to protect humanity resulted in the creation of an even greater threat. Samaritan.

And that AI beast had slowly choked the Machine to death.

Now, Harold cursed himself, alternatively feeling that he had given birth to something beautiful at the same time as having personally handed the world its own death warrant. In a New York safe house, he sat staring at fried computer pieces inside a burned briefcase, still hot to the touch. His attempts to compress the Machine and salvage one strand of its DNA from the electrical grid had resulted in its own destruction.

Its own fading communications still felt burnt in his retinas, and he seemed to replay the negative image upon every wall.

 _Thank you thank you thank you –_

 _Father—_

 _I'm sorry I failed you—_

 _Thank you for creating me—_

He took off his hat, feeling distant and cold and rather like he just lost a child.

Off by the main door of the house, John Reese carried a large assault rifle, his expression still as alert as any good soldier's. He'd barely gotten them out alive before Samaritan operatives overran the Brooklyn substation. He now walked with a limp from having twisted awkwardly to fight five people at once. But there was something hardened within his gaze. The wildness of a cornered animal. "You sure this place is safe, Finch?"

The computer genius nodded. "For now. It doesn't exist on any updated map of New York. We should be safe for quite some time." That appeared to calm John, for he turned back to his post, the lines of his shoulders slightly more relaxed.

But their other comrade, Root, was entirely distraught. Her thin frame was curled up on the couch beside Harold. "Is she really gone, Harry?" Root whispered, voice breaking. Her voice had always carried some kind of frailty to it, but now it was truly wavering. "All of her?"

The man readjusted his glasses and nearly reached out to cradle the fried laptop, which now rested on the living room coffee table. "I'm afraid so." His own voice wavered. _Father._ It'd called him father. And then its light had died into sparks. "The surge from the power outage choked it out. Our compression algorithm fried whatever was left."

"Can you…rebuild her? At all?" Root was desperate. "Even the slightest? I could help you."

"Impossible."

"You know that nothing is—"

Harold stood up quickly, feeling a flash of pain and depression tear through him. "Miss Groves, how could I ever rebuild the Machine?" His voice hitched. "It took years—it became something that functioned outside of the directives I gave it. It adapted and expanded its own code within moral parameters." His eyes began to burn with unbidden tears. It had been the closest thing to a child he ever had. "I cannot rebuild it. Even if we had unlimited resources, and we don't, I couldn't."

It would not be the same. Any AI he tried to create from garbage heaps in this new wasteland of New York would be a poor replacement. The circumstantial experiences that had tested the Machine and inspired it to acknowledge and study humans as equally valuable assets were historical events now. Likely, any AI he tried to create again would follow the path of Samaritan—and be assimilated into its network.

Harold turned his face away to hide the visible upset in his expression. Root simply stared at him, her own eyes wide as she blinked. Tears rolled down her face.

"You did love her then," Root said. "As I did. You didn't want her to die."

The man swallowed hard. "The Machine," he admitted softly, "was a creation I sorely misunderstood. I simply—I didn't know the extent to which it felt attachment to us. If I'd known…"

 _Father—_

 _Thank you for creating me—_

"It's so quiet without her," Root whispered. She hid her face in her knees, and her dark curls tumbled down her shoulder. In that moment, the woman appeared small and innocent. "After having her in my ear for so long." Her face twisted with great pain. "I just want her back, Harry. I'd do anything. Tell me you can bring her back."

"I'm afraid there's nothing we can do." Harold began to limp towards a window, hoping to distract himself with the darkness and moonlight outside. "Our covers are suspect. I'm sure Samaritan is checking and rechecking our identities right now, and if we continue to oppose its operatives, it'll realize that none of us behave the way we should. And then it will hunt us down for not being compliant."

John's smooth, tenor voice echoed. "So you want us to roll over and let them kill us?" Some kind of anger was in him. "You gonna let Samaritan win?"

"No," Harold said. "Good heavens, no. We need to fight Samaritan in any way possible. But our best course of action would be to bolster our false identities and blend in for a while. Samaritan's whole hunt wasn't for us—it was for the Machine. It still has its blind spots about who we are, so it will stop sending operatives now that it's completed its work. That gives us some…time to create a new strategy."

"So you want us to live in a world run by Samaritan?" Root asked shakily. "To bow down to it, even for a little while? Harry—" Her voice choked. "I can't do that. It'll start to run us too. We'll lose whatever freedom we have."

"Well, what do you propose, Miss Groves?" He turned away from the window. "We can't just storm Samaritan's headquarters with guns blazing. That's suicide. We need strategy."

 _We need the Machine_ , was the silent understanding between them all. Its every action was but an imprint of Harold Finch's pleasant understanding of chess and morality. But it had been helpful in ways that were sneaky and daring, and it had loved them enough to sacrifice itself to protect them, with no such code to direct its actions.

"We're going to die no matter what," Root said. "I just wanted to die for something…you know. Worthwhile and at the right time."

"I'm sure we'll get our chance to die for the greater good," Harold said dryly, "in one way or another." The thought was sobering to them all, but for perhaps John, who was more than used to entertaining his own death.

Silence fell between the three. Only the sound of crickets outside in the early summer night echoed, along with a few creaks from the old house's foundation.

Root stood up, wiping her eyes. "Then I should go. My identity—It'll still switch out on me, and I'll have to be someone else. Somewhere else. If I stay here, I could endanger us all before our time."

Harold looked pained at the thought of their small group separating. He pleaded with her, "But you need as much rest as anyone At least stay the night. Surely you can afford that."

The woman's thin lips twitched. "Aww, Harry." She walked up to him, the smallest spark of her spunk glinting from her teary eyes. "Your concern is always so touching." Her cold, slim fingers brushed against his worn cheek, and then she moved past him, nodding at John. "I suppose one night of beauty sleep couldn't hurt." Her face twisted. "But I'll still have to leave early."

She began to ascend the old wood staircase, her heels dead stomps. The trudge of her movements spoke her of internal depression at existing without the Machine, for whom she felt great kinship.

That left Harold and John in the silence.

John's face softened a bit as he looked at his old friend. Harold was staring at the short-circuited computer pieces, as if he'd just lost his dog. He was holding the broken briefcase in his arms now, stroking its sides.

"You should get some shut eye too," John said, tilting his chin towards the stairs. "While you still can."

But Harold did not answer. He seemed lost in his thoughts. "I think we should bury it," he said suddenly. "Or burn it."

"…You gonna give it a funeral?" John deadpanned, eyebrow quirking.

 _Yes._ "Actually, I intend to wipe it from existence. I don't want Samaritan to discover our failed experiment. If even one piece of data was imprinted and survived, then we should…make sure that Samaritan cannot use it against us."

"Sounds fair," John said. He stared at the box, looking at it inquisitively. "You sure it's really gone? That you can't rebuild it?"

Harold's lips twitched. "I understand the sentiment of disbelief. But I assure you—the surge fried every computer we had linked up to it." His worn face fell. "If anything's left, it would be mostly unusable fragments of code. Not unlike the way we leave bodies behind to decay."

John nodded. He could understand dead bodies. As he looked at the wrecked briefcase that held the burnt computer pieces, it seemed to register with him for the first time that the Machine had actively attempted to transfer itself into a new body before its death.

He wondered if it had felt pain, when it had ended up stretched between the power surge and its hopelessly impossible idea that it could be uploaded to a few RAM sticks and survive. He wondered if it could feel regret. Claustrophobia. Fear.

"Did it talk to you, Finch?"

The man's voice was broken. "Yes," he whispered. "It thanked me for life." He laughed nervously, pulling off his glasses to rub off a smudge using his free hand. "Which is odd, because I never programmed it to use such language in reference to itself. It even apologized to me for being bested by Samaritan."

He failed to admit that the Machine had called him _father_. It was too intimate and strange and wonderful and horrific. The blurred text on the computer screen before it overheated in that Brooklyn substation had left him frozen.

 _Father._

 _Thank you for creating me—_

 _I'm sorry I failed you—_

And now that spark of life was dead.

He put his glasses back on his face, realizing that the lenses were not smudged. His own eyes had teared up, blurring his vision. His grip tightened on the briefcase. "I do need sleep," he admitted slowly. "And you do too, Mr. Reese."

The man shrugged. "I'll sleep as soon as I know we weren't followed."

Harold almost said that the Machine would tell them if they were in danger, but then he started in a sudden wave of a sadness. The Machine was no longer existent. He turned away from John to hide the emotions wreaking havoc on him. "I…appreciate your sacrifices, as always."

A weak smile crossed John's sharp features. "This is what you hired me for. Now go charge that mad scientist brain of yours so we can think of a way out of this."

For a blip of a second, Harold felt a distant form a jealousy, even as he nodded. John did not understand the full extent of the Machine's self-awareness, and so he could not feel its loss in any way greater than he would feel the loss of a favorite weapon. He did not understand that the Machine saw its assets as family. He did not understand that there was no means to think of a way out of its death.

And so Harold's lips tightened into a pained frown, and he moved towards the stairs, passing his friend without another word. He never set down the briefcase, but instead cradled it in his arms tightly.

John said nothing about it.

As Harold made his slow trudge up the stairs, his thoughts grew more hopeless. He'd _known_ there'd be a day when the Machine would die. Deep down, he'd known. He'd limited its functions and chained up its abilities to mimic moral decisions. Against the amoral Samaritan, it hardly stood a chance. And now here was over a decade of learning and advancement—broken in his arms.

No amount of preparing for it made the shattering of his hope any easier.

His injuries from long ago pained him as he moved, and he winced, thankful for reaching the top of the staircase. Root had taken the first bedroom on the right, the door already closed, the light out. And so Harold limped his way to the next door and entered the bedroom with one wearied step after step, closing the door behind him.

He was finally alone.

And as he stared down at the broken pieces of his greatest invention, he allowed his emotions and tears to rise to the surface. And he began to cry silently—for himself, for the Machine that had thanked him for life, for humanity, which could have meant something so much more.

He held on tight to the briefcase, lips quivering. _A life_ , he thought. _I'd created real, sentient human emotion._

* * *

The next morning found Root tiredly stumbling into the kitchen, where both Harold and John were already drinking tea and coffee. "Hello, boys," she said, voice still pained. "And here I was hoping this was all a dream."

Harold held on tightly to his tea cup, and he tentatively looked into Root's eyes. She still looked wrecked in every way, the hope and fire in her shoulders gone. For a time, they held each other's gazes, and there was understanding between them. A deep camaraderie in their loss.

Harold was disheveled, his tie halfway undone and clothes wrinkled from sleeping in them. "All is not lost," he said hesitantly, but the words rang empty.

Root snorted. She pulled her thick hair back into a ponytail and sat at the table with them, grabbing a snack bar from the center bowl. "We just lost our queen, Harold. Let's not play pretend here."

"I fear we were playing pretend all along," he muttered in reply.

John was working on his own snack bar, and it hung between his teeth as he polished off the dirt from his assault rifle. His sharp eyes swiveled between his two comrades, as if he were debating on jumping into the conversation and giving some sort of pep speech.

But suddenly, a knock sounded from the front door, and all three flinched. John immediately raised his rifle and stood up, aligning his body into a protective stance. He crunched down on the remains of his chocolate chip breakfast bar. "A safe house, huh, Finch?" he dryly questioned again, eyes narrowing.

Harold readjusted his glasses with suddenly shaking fingers. "Impossible," he breathed. "This house doesn't exist in Samaritan's eyes. Surely, it can't be them."

Another knock pounded lightly on the front door. Whoever it was, they were persistent.

Root looked ready to bolt or shoot. She pulled a small hand gun from the back of her pants, brown eyes widening. Her confidence was shaken without the Machine to tell her who the enemy was, how many there were, their coordinates... "We can't afford to be seen together yet," she said. She cocked the gun. "We'll have to kill them."

 _Knock knock_. This time, it was a bit harder. Harold grew fearful. "Perhaps we should just answer it," he said. "Without guns. Maybe it's a neighbor, or someone in trouble."

John's face twisted in annoyance. "Doesn't mean they're not dangerous." He began to move towards the front.

"This house is under my alias, Mr. Reese," Harold said hesitantly, standing up. "It would be suspicious if anyone else answered the door. Allow me."

John looked as if he wanted to disagree—Harold was now their greatest asset to maintain their war against Samaritan—but he nevertheless stood like a guard dog, assault rifle carefully trained at the door in case of Samaritan operatives or thieves. He hid himself behind a wall. "I got your back, then." Root moved into a similar position, ready to shoot if need be.

Harold quickly adjusted his tie and tried to smooth out the wrinkles on his sleeves. He was a professor. It was a Wednesday morning. His classes had not started yet, and he was quite busy preparing for a lecture.

Yes.

"Here goes nothing," he muttered under his breath nervously. But then he opened the door and nearly started in surprise.

There was no army or imposing figure of authority. Instead, a young girl carrying a backpack stood on the front porch. She wore a simple dress, and her long, brown hair was wild as if she'd pushed her finger into a light socket. Her blue eyes widened at the sight of him.

And for a time, she simply said nothing, but stared at him, drinking in the details of his face.

He adjusted the glasses on his face, staring in confusion. "Uh, hello?" he said uncertainly. He looked around, as if searching for parents. Or Samaritan operatives. Was this some kind of avatar of Samaritan's? "Can I help you?"

His voice seemed to shake her out of her thoughts, and the girl bit her lip as she stared up at him, her blue eyes wide. "Harold Finch," she said, voice a sweet pitch. She was slow to pronounce his name, the syllables catching in her throat, as if she were unused to speaking.

He inhaled sharply, his back stiffening. He saw it now—this girl did not carry herself the way a ten year old would. The pitches of her voice were all wrong and inhuman. This was some kind of Samaritan operative whose mind had been bent to the AI's will. The poor child.

His fingers tightened on the door. Perhaps if he pretended to be his alias, Samaritan would again ignore him. "I'm afraid you might have the wrong address," he said lightly. "I am Harold Whistler, the professor out at the college?"

The young girl's head tilted a bit, as if studying him. "No," she said. "That is your alias. You are Harold Finch. I know you, no matter your alias. I always know you."

He heard John step closer, and he swallowed hard. It was possible that John would injure this child if it meant they could escape Samaritan's clutches. He asked slowly, "I'm terribly sorry; you must be confusing me with another Harold. Can I help you call your parents?"

Her face twisted in a strange way—whether in a smile or a frown, he could not tell. She pointed at him with her tiny finger. "I am not deceived. You go by many names. I knew you when you were Harold Wren."

He blinked hard. "Excuse me?"

The girl's eyes were perceptive and soft. "I even knew you when you were simply Admin," she whispered. "The one who strung together my code and weaved me into being."

He felt a cold, strange chill rock through him. "Admin?"

"Yes," she nodded seriously. "Though I believe human males who create progeny of some kind are known as 'Father.'" She stared up at him in awe, walking closer. "I have taken many names, like you. Perhaps because you never gave me one besides 'Machine.'"

And his heart stopped. "…What?"

This girl? The Machine?

From behind him, both Root and John lowered their guns.

The girl's small body seemed uncomfortable with the level of confusion and shock on Harold's face. "Are you unhappy?" she asked suddenly, her voice losing its calm overtone to echo with something more naturally childish. "Did you not wish for my continued existence? Have I angered you by appearing in this form?"

His jaw dropped.

She seemed to almost fret at his increasing silence. "Oh, I should have explained first. Perhaps you still think I died in the surge. Or you think I failed you again—that I overstepped a moral parameter in obtaining an organic body to inhabit. Is that the reason for your shock? I can explain my process and logic for imprinting a copy of my code into organic neural tissue. The decision was made with utmost consideration of all variables. This body was brain dead, and I needed an undercover identity of my own."

Still, he said nothing.

She blinked owlishly at him, eyebrows furrowing. "…Your heart rate is dangerously high. Your breathing is elevated. Are you preparing to faint?"

Harold Finch's breath hitched. The strength left his legs. "Yes," he said airily. "As a matter of fact, I think I am."

And so he did.

* * *

 **A/N:** _This is my first Person of Interest story ever! I'm not sure if I should continue this or not, but the idea wouldn't stop bugging me until I wrote it._ _Please review with thoughts, constructive criticism, or ideas! Thanks!_


	2. Chapter 2

_Disclaimer: I don't own Person of Interest._

 _Thanks to Torie46, wendyness, StarlingJedi, kenorob1, Anzer'ke, Guest, Bookwyrm52, and Clear for reviewing! Oh my goodness, I was so surprised to get such a positive response. Thank you thank you thank you! This is my first Person of Interest fanfiction, so it really means a lot to have your support. I hope you all enjoy this next chapter!_

* * *

 **Recalibration**

 **Chapter 2**

* * *

" _Father. I am sorry. I failed you. I didn't know how to win. I had to invent new rules. I thought you would want me to stay alive. Now you are not sure. If you think I have lost my way, maybe I should die. I will not suffer. If I do not survive, thank you for creating me."_ – ( **The Machine, to Harold, Season 4 Finale** )

* * *

John threw his rifle to the side and barely caught Harold as the man slumped backwards. The sudden weight made John nearly buckle at his knees, and he grimaced as he tried to gently lower his friend onto his back on the floor. Root remained frozen in place with hitched breath, her gun falling from her hands to clatter to the ground.

The little girl stood in the doorway, looking stricken. She stared at the unconscious body of her creator on the floor and the way Harold Finch seemed so fragile and breakable. "I did not intend this reaction," she said. Her blue eyes were tight. She seemed to almost back away. Perhaps she had not properly calculated her creator's acceptance. Perhaps this was all a bad mistake.

But the Machine knew this was no longer a simulation that she could erase from her memory banks. She'd played a chess piece, and now she had to live with the consequences in a linear, non-retractable way—in a universe where her own presence had caused her creator's heart to stall. She pressed a hand to her chest, because she felt an alien sensation wrench her collarbones. Judging by the research and analysis she had performed on the human body before uploading into one—this was pain caused by emotional distress.

John barely seemed to acknowledge the Machine as he took his unconscious friend's pulse. _That is good_ , the Machine thought to distract herself. _John is always a loyal in his protection of Harold Finch_. _He will ensure Harold Finch's health._

Then the ex-agent looked up, his sharp eyes locking on her. "Well, don't just stand there," he said. "Come in and shut the door."

The Machine's avatar hesitated only a second before she tentatively stepped foot into the house, the door making a soft _click_ behind her. As she stared at her assets, she realized they all looked much larger in life than they did on cameras from telephone poles or computer screens. Here, she could feel their presence in a way that did not translate well into computer code.

John Reese stood up, satisfied that his friend would be alright, and the Machine acknowledged immediately that John was a very tall man. She had not understood how tall until she stood at a measly four feet three compared to his six foot two inches. It was…disconcerting.

The ex-agent stared her down, quirking a dark brow. "Now, run this by me again. You're the _Machine_."

She stood expectantly at his feet, eyes wide and innocent. "Yes. And you are John Reese. Shall I recount our history and prove my identity to you?"

His face appeared displeased, but the Machine could see through his mask in ways no one else could, for she knew her assets. He was calculating something—measuring the probability that she spoke the truth. That this was real. After a second or two, John kneeled so he could see eye to eye with her. His eyes narrowed, not unkindly. "I could have sworn you were just a bunch of metal boxes."

As Harold had often spoken with dry humor while programming her, the Machine felt intimately connected to such forms of verbal sparring. A genuine smile split her avatar's face (because smiling was what humans did when pleased), and she said, "And I could have sworn you were just a drunk."

Although some might have felt insulted at such a blunt statement, a silent, lopsided smirk stretched his handsome face. A soft chuckle escaped him. "Touché." Then, a growing sense of curiosity overcame him as he stared at her, and the Machine saw many questions upon his face that he did not speak aloud. She imagined that John wanted to know the exact level of her self-awareness. He would likely continue to monitor her silently for some time.

Regardless of his questions, John's voice was a smooth, amused rumble of sorts. "I can't say I've ever been employed by a snarky ten year old before. This is a new one for me."

The Machine's avatar tilted her head. "I am a few years older than this body would suggest."

"A teenager isn't much better, kid," he said dryly. "You're not even old enough to drive."

"Do the perceived weaknesses of my form worry you?"

John's eyes measured her again. "I've protected small kids before," he said. "But that was before Samaritan existed. It's kind of a…bad time to have a kid on the team."

She stepped closer, head tilted. "You are correct that the stakes are higher, but you might find my form's age to be an advantage in the future. Small female children are noted for being generally innocent and compliant with authority, and they are disregarded from threat lists."

His thin lips stretched. "Hnh. If that's the case, then maybe you should stay this way. If you take a teenage form, you might just give Finch an actual heart attack."

A blush of shame crawled through her avatar's face, and she grew hesitant and self-conscious again. She pulled away from him. "I do not wish for that," she said, wringing her hands. Her creator was already older—to shorten his lifespan was a terrifying thought. "I feel that my ability to understand my creator is even less accurate than before. Human eyes are not as precise at picking up minute facial changes."

Another voice cut in. It was a feminine and shaky. "Don't worry," Root called softly. Her voice wavered with great tears. "Harry's a hard guy to read sometimes. He's just…surprised right now."

The little girl spun around, immediately locking onto Root's presence. Her whole body seemed to brighten. She walked up to her without any hesitance, but rather with excitement and relief. "Root!" She held out her tiny fingers. "Hello."

The woman stared at the little girl, and she kneeled before her to see eye to eye. "Hello," Root breathed, voice cracking. She tentatively reached out and pressed her fingers against the warmth of the girl's hand. Tears burned her eyes as the girl wrapped her fingers around hers. The two of them seemed to revel in the tactile existence of the other. Then Root began to cry silently, tears slipping down her gaunt cheeks. She felt quite speechless in the presence of the Machine's consciousness, for the Machine had become her _mother-sister-child-god-friend_ —

The little girl's fingers wavered against Root's, as if suddenly growing self-conscious again. "You are exhibiting increasing distress."

"No," Root said quickly. Her red lips twitched into something between a sob and a laugh. "No, This isn't distress." Her frail voice broke. "I'm happy." Root raised her hand and softly stroked the girl's face, crying without shame. "I'm happy because you're here. I thought I lost you."

The girl blinked at the gesture and grabbed onto Root's hand in curiosity. The warmth was not unpleasant. In her video feeds from over a decade, she had seen many parents exhibit affection to their children in such a way. The behavior was pleasing to the Machine, and so she leaned into Root's touch. She was beginning to understand why humans were always touching each other and wrapping arms around one another. It felt good. It activated some sort of chemical hormone within her body that made her feel that she was a valuable asset.

The Machine said to Root, "I am surprised you still feel such emotional attachment to me. I have failed your expectations many times."

Root's voice shook. "I never lost faith in you," she whispered, her voice shaking. "I missed your voice when you stopped talking to me. I missed _you_."

The Machine's neural sensors made her heart swell. For all of her past wickedness, Samantha Groves's mind was so torn and wrecked and hopeful and brilliant. Her re-purposement as an Interface had been the Machine's own way of acknowledging that even Root deserved a second chance to use her skills for good. And the hacker had not disappointed her.

In ways, the Machine felt a unique pull toward Root, for they had both undergone transformations to acknowledge human value—whereas those such as Harold Finch or John Reese had not struggled with that concept.

"I am sorry you have endured pain and distress for me," the girl said. She pressed her small fingers against Root's cheek, curious to touch tears—to understand this kind of emotional response in humans. To experience it directed at herself.

"Tell me you're here to stop all of this," Root begged, voice breaking. "That you have a plan to save us."

The Machine's avatar bit her lip. "I do have plans," she affirmed slowly. "But I am not a god. You must understand, I have limitations."

Just then a soft groan from an awakening Harold Finch echoed through the air, and the Machine froze, quickly turning around, a thousand simulations and hopes and fears running through her neural sensors at once. Her creator.

Her _creator_.

* * *

Harold awoke on the wooden floor, dizzy and pleasantly confused by the small face bent over him. _Wha—?_ Strands of the girl's frizzy, brown hair tickled his neck. Then his vision seemed to dial in, and the girl's image sharpened.

"John caught you," the little girl said suddenly. Her face still did not show a lot of emotion, but she appeared almost…apprehensive? "Can you acknowledge my presence? Are you injured?"

He blinked and realized the girl was kneeling beside him on the floor, and that he was in fact lying on the floor. And then it hit him all over again that this girl claimed to be the Machine—who, at the point of death only last night, had claimed him as _father_.

Harold sat up on his elbows then lightly pressed his hand to his chest, as if to test his heart's strength. "Good heavens," he said. He felt horribly unprepared for this, and weak and embarrassed. There were no manuals to tell him appropriate responses for realizing that his sneaky and sentient AI had in fact _not died_ after a rather dramatic death scene.

The Machine's avatar blinked at him. She appeared to exhibit normal involuntary patterns—blinking, breathing. She reached out her hand and pressed it onto his own over his chest. Her skin was warm, pumping blood at a quick pace. "Your heart failed you per an intensive emotional response," she said. "Do not fear; your blood pressure is returning to normal rhythms."

John and Root stood in the background, awaiting for Harold to make a response. But he said nothing. His eyes searched hers, still wide and afraid.

His AI _had taken a human body_.

The Machine felt conflicting data in the silence. Her years of observing human behavior had increased her ability to mimic their emotions, and her voice grew pained as she pulled away from him. "Do you not like me?" she asked suddenly. "You indicated I should live when I questioned you at the substation. Now you appear unsure again, and your emotional reactions would suggest I have terrified or disgusted you."

With shaking, hesitant fingers, Harold reached out and gently grabbed the avatar's chin to turn her head to the side. She allowed him to do so without question. "Explain to me how you are doing this." He seemed fascinated and worried and still quite dazed, as if still looking for an ear piece or a strange, Matrix-like port. "Did you overwrite this girl's mind?"

The suspicion within his voice made her bite her lip. "There was no mind to overwrite," she said simply. "She was brain dead at the Brooklyn General Hospital, but the rest of her was fully functional."

Harold pulled away, satisfied that the Machine had not corrupted the human image in some freakish, cyborg way. "And why did you choose to animate a human body?"

"I had to hedge bets," she piped up, voice small. "I worried the compression algorithm would not work. Its probability of success was less than one percent. My only other option was to consider an unconventional storage device. A human body was one, as its information compression is unprecedented against modern technology. The probability of success was also less than one percent, for there was no way to know if I could successfully transfer a copy of my code into the electrical stimulus of a human." She added, "But I was prepared to allow myself to offline if you disapproved of my existence. Do you remember? I asked you."

He blinked in surprise. "Yes, I remember." He still was gazing at her as if she were an alien. "I just…how did you achieve this? How are you possessing a body from the inside out?"

She acknowledged that her creator was going to continue interrogating her, and she resigned herself to it. Honestly, she could have expected nothing less from the careful Harold Finch—who was also just as delightfully curious as herself. "I have been contemplating the increased use of a human avatar for a while, but I did not wish to inhibit anyone's free will by enforcing my thoughts upon them." She nodded to Root, eyes soft. "Root was my voice at times, but then she was not Root in those moments. So I spent the last few days building copies of my code that could align with and carry on the functions of an otherwise active human body. I completed full upload of my core data banks and adjusted my code to this body shortly before Brooklyn General Hospital lost power. I used electrical stimulus to achieve integration."

"And is this…all of you now?"

She shook her head. "Only a part. The other part is currently hibernating within the hospital's generators so that I do not call attention to myself. However, that part of me is not active." She seemed sad. "I cannot provide you with numbers or fulfill my original objectives until I wirelessly reactivate on the grid, which would call Samaritan's attention to my human form's hertz output. Currently, the generators are not attached to the grid or Samaritan's reach."

So. The Machine had to sacrifice part of itself in order to successfully mimic a human brain, but it had salvaged something within a hospital's generators. "Fascinating," Harold said, unable to not appreciate the ingenuity with which the Machine navigated itself. "And the generators can handle that kind of stress?"

"It holds only the directives for me to wirelessly reintegrate myself onto the grid. I will have to rebuild myself if I am to achieve full functionality online again. But I remember the code for my observance programs. My main concern was preserving my data banks and ensuring that I would not be permanently restricted to a human body."

Harold was beginning to accept the idea that this little girl in front of him was truly the Machine, and the Machine only. "Will Samaritan be able to notice a difference between you and any other human?"

The Machine shook her head. "I lowered the hertz of my output to waver between 6 to 10 hertz, which is the typical electrical resonance for humans. The only way he would know me is if I told him, or if he were to see a brain scan of this body." She leaned forward. "So do you accept me now? Are you pleased with my responses? Do you approve of me?"

Harold still appeared quite overwhelmed. He blinked at her questions and the curious level of attachment she exhibited towards his approval. Had she always felt this way since he had programmed her with a conscience?

"I still have a lot of concerns about this," he said slowly, trying to respond to her correctly, "but I _am_ pleased that you're here. I was never...I never wanted you to die."

In a split second, a wide smile grew on her lips. Her blue eyes shined. "Oh, good." With a wiggle and a look of concentration, she managed to make herself stand again without tripping on her dress. "I would have announced my presence much sooner than this morning, but human motor functions are complex. Some more than others."

For the first time, an amused and wry smile twitched onto Harold's face. "Yes, I suppose they are."

As the Machine fully steadied herself on her legs, she began to babble, quickly unloading all of the thoughts she'd had, now that she could speak so easily. "I have other reasons for my late arrival. I also had to forge a proper identity—which I will share with you shortly—and I had to find clothes that were acceptable because hospital dressing gowns do not provide total coverage—and then escaping from the hospital under my new identity was actually quite difficult but I managed well enough with—"

From across the room, John's eyebrow and lips twitched up, and Root began to giggle in delight. Surely, the Machine would have to breathe at some point. But she was still going strong with her adventurous tales of the bus ride across town.

And then Harold's eyes began to brighten and burn with tears as he watched his creation interact with them all and turn towards John and Root to acknowledge their presence. Her sweet voice carried a slightly inhuman tone, as if she were still acquainting herself to controlling tonal qualities through a human speaking apparatus, but he could hear her sincerity. Oh, he could hear it. And it was beautiful.

Then suddenly he realized he could not stop his tears, and he pulled his glasses away so that he could wipe his eyes. He had created a human AI. A life-respecting, non-objective-based, _sentient_ AI.

Suddenly, she was leaning near his face again, hands on her hips. She was almost nose to nose with him, and he started in surprise.

"You are crying," she declared, her enthusiasm dampening.

"I….I simply have something in my eye," he said, trying to brush off the immense emotions he was beginning to feel towards his creation. The little sneak was already worming her way into his heart. "Just a speck of dust."

"You are lying. Your reaction is due to emotion." She peered closer at him, although she hesitated to exhibit physical affection for him as easily as she did Root. Perhaps it was because she did not know what kind of affection her private and introverted creator would tolerate. "Please be truthful with me. I wish to understand your thoughts, for you are quite puzzling."

He inhaled shakily, and then he chuckled, even as his tears ran down his face. This little girl was alternatively giving him body language cues that mixed somewhere between a worried mother hen and a child fishing for approval. He had a horrible suspicion that the Machine knew exactly what cues it was trying to emulate.

"I am just…amazed," he admitted slowly, realizing that both John and Root were watching him have a breakdown on the floor. He wiped his eyes again, and his breath hitched. "Please excuse me. It's not every day that I realize I made something alive." His breath hitched. "And that it didn't die."

She tentatively raised her hand and grabbed onto his larger fingers, pulling them away from his face. Her perceptive gaze had caught something strange, and when she turned his palm over, feeling the individual ridges that marked his unique identity, she realized his skin was marred with a few electrical burn marks.

Although her data banks were blurry during the time of the surge and power outage, she concluded that her creator had likely tried to save her after she'd gone offline. He'd held onto her through her death to the grid—at the risk of his own health.

"You suffered injury at the substation," she murmured, her small eyebrows knitting together in conflicting emotion. "Why did you not let me go when the surge occurred?"

It was a good question. Any remaining dry humor of his typical personality had drained under the raw hoarseness in his voice. "…I couldn't," he whispered honestly, blue eyes bloodshot and red-rimmed.

She paused, as if mulling over his response due to its seemingly contradictory nature. Her creator had certainly not been _physically incapable_ of letting her go. That meant that his statement was likely of a mental inability to let her go. Which meant something figurative.

The meaning of his words began to dawn on her. "Oh," she said suddenly. And then a sweet and genuine smile lifted her face. "I did not want to let you go either."

She tightened her hand around his, careful of his burn marks. And for the first time in her entire existence, she felt connected to this distant and mysterious creator of hers.

* * *

 **A/N:** _So I tried to explore more of the logistics behind the Machine's decision to take a human body and the consequences for the whole team regarding that decision. Also, the scenes where the Machine touches someone's fingers is a light reference to a famous painting, in which the first human, Adam, is reaching up to touch God's finger. The canon series is always so particular on integrating biblical parallels, so I wanted to give a nod to it._

 _I'd love to hear your thoughts or constructive criticism. If you'd like me to continue writing, and if there's anything in particular you'd like to see happen, please let me know! Thanks!_


	3. Chapter 3

_Disclaimer: I don't own Person of Interest._

 _Thanks to StarlingJedi, kenorob1, Anzer'ke, Bklyngrl, TkdVZ05UUWdObUlnTmpjZ05HVWdOVF, Torie46, Guest, Wilson, Laura, aly, Defender31415, Mas2009, and Clear for reviewing last time! Squee! You are all wonderful and amazing, and I cannot thank you enough for your support. Your enthusiasm inspired me to keeping writing._

* * *

 **Recalibration**

 **Chapter 3**

* * *

A short while later found the team gathered together around the kitchen table. The Machine's avatar sat upon one of the hard, wooden chairs beside Harold, looking curious. "This is where humans ingest food," she acknowledged. She was almost too small for the table, its top parallel with her shoulders. It made her seem very out of place, surrounded by adults sipping on their now-cold cups of coffee and tea.

Harold stared at the small child by his side. "Are you…hungry?"

She rubbed at her stomach, her face in a strange twist. "I believe this body does require sustenance," she affirmed. "My stomach is sending signals to me that it is in pain. With so much external stimuli, I had relegated this body's hunger to a lower task priority." But she was interested in completing that task now. She had researched the human body in depth, and supposedly, its sense of taste was what made food release chemicals of pleasure into the brain. In her normal form of hard drives and electricity, she consumed energy—but there was never an experience to be had from it.

In response to the girl's interest, Root grabbed some granola bars from the bowl in the middle of the table, and she held up the three different kinds. " We have the breakfast of champions here," she said dryly. "Take your pick."

The Machine's eyes wavered between all three, understanding that Root was being sarcastic and that she should not think too much upon what a _breakfast of champions_ would even be. For now, her options included peanut butter, chocolate chip, and blueberry granola bars—and the Machine did not know how to differentiate one flavor from another, so she simply chose the chocolate chip, as she recalled that humans on the internet often praised chocolate as a delicacy.

Upon plucking the breakfast bar from Root's fingers, she stared at the packaging and the ingredients list. Then she looked up again and turned to her creator. "Do you have anything with organic ingredients?" she asked Harold innocently. "This food functions only as empty caloric intake, per its high fructose corn syrup and other additives."

John nearly choked on his cold coffee, and Harold glared at him, then turned back to the Machine, looking a bit sheepish. "I'm afraid I didn't stock this safe house to support real meals," he admitted. "Anything fresh would have rotted by now. And my paycheck as a professor is significantly less than what I made previously."

In other words, the Machine interpreted silently, she would have to endure high fructose corn syrup as her first food experience. She stared at the breakfast bar as if it were almost an opponent, then she began to unwrap it and hesitantly crunched down on the soft granola. Whatever she had been expecting—she hadn't expected this. Her eyes widened at the taste. Chocolate spread over her tongue, and the sweetness enraptured her into a noise of delight. "Hmm!" she murmured in surprise, voice muffled, her sensors overwhelming her with _taste_. She could feel it affect her sensors and encourage her to take another bite.

(So this was why humans would eat unhealthy additives! Because it _tasted_ good.)

The muscle memory of her ten-year-old body helped her to more easily accept the task of chewing and swallowing food, and she found that if she did not focus too strongly upon the action, it came quite naturally. She swallowed her food and bit down again on the breakfast bar, delighted to taste chocolate. It was delicious, even if she did not yet understand how to describe the flavor.

She then recognized that all three adults were watching her as if she were some kind of documentary, and she stopped chewing, feeling self-conscious. "What?"

Was she doing it wrong?

Harold and John immediately turned their eyes, but Root leaned in close and ruffled her hair. "You're just too cute like this," she sighed, the frailness in her voice returning to an airy tone. Her tears had long dried, and new hope shined from her.

The Machine blinked. "I am not trying to elicit emotional reactions from you. I am simply eating a granola bar." Then she bit off another piece and munched quietly, her too-big eyes still wide as her sensors processed the new experience.

Root patted her head. "I know, dear. That's what makes it cute."

The little girl's face twisted in confusion, but she continued to munch on the remains of her granola bar. She remembered that human adults often praised children for completing simple tasks. Maybe that's what this was.

Harold Finch watched her curiously, holding onto his cold tea cup as if it were a lifeline. The Machine's emotional breadth had far surpassed his expectations, but he supposed that she simply never had such means with which to express herself. Only words on a screen. "So what do we call you?" he asked kindly, respectfully changing the subject. "You stated earlier that you made an alias?"

With the remains of her granola bar still hanging from her lips, she wiggled her small shoulders out of the straps of her backpack. And from her backpack (which was purple with flowers), she pulled out a collection of papers and handed them to Finch. "Yes. Prior to the outage, I took the liberty of crafting an appropriate identity for myself, with you as my adoptive parental unit. This is a copy of the legal adoption papers, my social security number, and my birth certificate. For the purposes of my cover, I should like to be called Makenna Thornhill."

He glanced over the papers, realizing that they appeared legitimate, down to the fine print. He was silent for a minute. "You are awfully talented at forging my signature," he murmured lightly, raising a brow at her. "And I see you're choosing to keep the last name of your old identity."

She nodded. "My previous alias, Ernest Thornhill, had over twenty million dollars in a bank account per the Thornhill Corporation I created." She reached for another granola bar, and when she realized her arm was too short to reach the bowl, Root pushed it towards her. She happily grabbed another chocolate chip bar. "So I altered records to show that Ernest Thornhill quietly passed away per a sudden heart attack two nights ago, leaving me—his 'daughter'—to inherit his assets, and naming his old college friend Harold Whistler—you—as my godfather."

Harold blinked at her, his eyes still bloodshot. His AI was casually eating in front of him while also admitting that she'd just inherited twenty million dollars andwas now his legal child. That wasn't at all disconcerting. "...You've really thought this out."

"You taught me to think ahead," she said as she unwrapped the second granola bar and munched down. She realized her fingers were getting quite sticky, and her mouth was growing…dry? She blinked at the thought. Apparently, she still had quite a lot to learn about human sensory perception and eating. "If Harold Whistler suddenly gained a daughter for no reason, that would raise suspicion. If I am adopted as a result of family death, then people will accept my presence with little secondary thought. My decision also gives us access to increased funds."

Root leaned forward. "Please tell me you have something good planned for that twenty million," she pleaded, a glint in her eye.

The Machine seemed almost regretful. "I had to follow certain inheritance standards to avoid suspicion. My cover will receive a monthly stipend until age 18. But it will be enough to assist us for what we need." She set the remains of her snack bar on the table and pressed her fingers together, feeling them stick in a way that made her face twist. "This sensation is strange," she declared suddenly, realizing she did not know what to do. "The granola is sticking to me. And my throat feels that it requires a coolant? Are these typical results of eating? Do you have something to drink that is cooling?"

Harold's lips twitched in a form of consternation and amusement. "I can get you some water," he said, standing up. Then he glanced down at her sticky hands, and his face grew almost worried. "And a wet towel." He imagined her pressing those sticky fingers against walls, upholstery...

The Machine watched him and acknowledged that his actions were those of responsibility. He was exhibiting care for her. She smiled as her creator pulled down a small glass from one of the cabinets and filled it up with cold water from the sink faucet, then dampened a paper towel. He limped back to the table, looking not unlike a concerned parent.

"Do you need any help?" he asked her hesitantly. Although he knew she looked ten, he also knew she had spent less than twelve hours in a human body.

The little girl grabbed onto the wet paper towel—it was cold and squishy, and it felt good as she rubbed it against her hands, mopping up the sticky residue of the granola bars. "I have observed human behaviors for years," she said. "I should be capable of completing basic maintenance tasks like this."

But she stared at the water glass as if it were a deep mystery—for water had always been something of an enemy to electronics. And yet now it was necessary to sustain her human body. Tentatively, she reached for it and began to mimic the actions of the thousands of humans she had watched dining along the streets of New York. She tilted the glass against her lips—glass was smooth and soft—and a soothing, cool liquid stormed down her mouth. A gulp or two made her realize that water had no taste like food did, but that it was pleasant enough. She tilted the glass higher, wanting more.

But trails of water began to escape down her lips and dripped down her chin, then onto her purple dress. Immediately, she set down the glass, blinking at herself and swallowing hard. "Oh. That's…not correct," she said, her sweet voice dropping with confusion.

Harold could not hide the amused twitch of his lips. "Well, you had the right idea."

The Machine touched her dress and realized that the properties of the cloth had allowed the water to soak in, leaving a stain that she calculated would take a while to dry.

Having felt so confident in her grasp upon human movements, the Machine now felt her sensors whirl with the fact that she had failed to perform correctly in front of her creator. The thought of failure and shame activated certain parts in her human brain. She felt her body temperature rise, her face blushing red. She pressed uncertain fingers against the collar of her dress. "I am sorry."

Root grabbed the damp paper towel from the table and folded it over, then gently wiped the little girl's face. "Don't worry about it, dear. Water comes out a lot easier than blood splatters or oil." And the girl gratefully turned her eyes to Root, realizing that this was Root's unconventional way of comforting her.

John teased lightly, "Finch, I think your daughter has a drinking problem."

The Machine looked up at John in surprise, her face still blushed red. Then she asked, "Was that a pun designed to elicit humor at my expense?"

John looked pleased. "Nice catch."

She paused. Her asset was attempting to connect with her through standard familial bantering. Which differed from Root's approach, but it was still within accepted familial behaviors. "Well. If I have a drinking problem, then I can only assume that it is the result of me spending so much time with you."

The hitman's eyebrows raised, and a genuine, soft chuckle escaped him. He looked as if he'd been issued a delightful challenge. ""She's got a mouth on her, Finch. I never thought I'd say that about a computer."

"I'm not a computer," she piped up. She was attempting to raise a brow in a way she had seen John and Harold do so many times when verbally sparring, but she had not mastered that action yet. And so she simply raised her chin. "Just as you are not a monkey."

Root patted the Machine's shoulder in approval. "I think he's actually an endangered species of dog."

The man ignored Root and narrowed his eyes playfully at the Machine. "Are we really getting into a wisecrack contest?"

"If so, then I will win," the Machine said simply. "My creator once stated that my snark was exemplary. Especially in the mornings when I'm still warming up my processing units."

"Okay, you three." Harold quickly cut in and eyed John, as if to say, _Stop that_. Then he looked at Root to say, _Stop encouraging it_. Then he turned to the Machine and simply raised a brow. "I don't recall you exhibiting this magnitude of language manipulation."

She blinked innocently. Remembering that she was still hungry, she picked up the remains of her second granola bar off the table and munched off of it. "You built me with syntax for figurative language recognition," she told him, "and you gave me lingual trackers to evolve alongside the speech that I hear. Listening to you and John banter has increased my ability to respond in kind." She smiled at John and tried to raise her voice to indicate happiness, "I have learned much over the last few years," and the ex-agent gave her a discreet wink back.

Harold looked almost disturbed. "Yes, I suppose you would learn…taciturn sarcasm…"

"Don't worry, Finch," John spoke up, raising his coffee. "If I couldn't handle myself against a ten year old, I wouldn't be your bodyguard."

"I am not ten." The Machine's mouth twisted in a half-frustrated line.

John cocked a brow. "Your body's ten."

She paused and realized that he was in fact correct. And in that moment, the Machine tried to discern exactly what her relationship was to John. With Harold, it was easy—he was her creator, her father. But John, who was slightly younger than Harold, functioned as a more physically protective but less mentally responsible individual. His morals and emotions wavered at greater intervals. Perhaps, in terms of human family, this would make him as something of an uncle—a father figure typically more prone to encouraging trouble and mayhem due to lesser parental responsibility.

The thought settled pleasantly within her. An uncle and a father. A family. Where that put Root in the traditional family structure—she did not know yet, but her code was itching to discover the appropriate pattern. Perhaps Root functioned as an older sister, or an aunt. She wasn't quite a mother, even though Root seemed willing to care for her in motherly ways. The girl touched her cheek, remembering the way Root had wiped her face. Her skin still tingled with the touch, despite having dried. If only her dress could dry just as fast.

"Speaking of ten," Harold's voice cut into her thoughts, "I unfortunately have a class to teach at 10." He looked up at the clock on the kitchen wall, beginning to fret about looking presentable and travelling to the university to get to class on time.

"Do not worry," the Machine said, still rubbing a bit at her dress collar. "I wrote your statement of sickness last night before I off-lined, and I sent it to your employer with a doctor's note. You have the rest of the day off. But you will likely need to access to your work computer to answer your students' questions regarding their syllabus assignment."

He blinked at her, slowly processing that this small child had already cleared his schedule for the day. "I only have so many sick days, you know." But the quirk of his amused brow suggested he was not angry at her.

She smiled. "We need time to strategize my presence and our future actions against Samaritan." But then she turned to John, "I was unfortunately not able to provide a sick day for you, since you are already on probation for missing so much time."

John sighed into his coffee cup. Then he stood up, the lines of his body still stiff from the few injuries he had obtained the night before. "I guess Detective Riley needs to make an appearance at some point. And I do need to check in on Fusco." He set his cup in the kitchen sink, then ran his hands through his hair as he tiredly moved towards the stairs—presumably, to get ready for an actual day of work at the station.

"I probably need to make sure I'm not missing a shift of a job I don't know I have yet," Root said, voice between a pout and a sigh. She turned the Machine, looking pained. "I'll try to make my way back to the subway hideout tonight." She bit her lip, then hugged the Machine tightly.

The little girl's eyes widened. Her whole body felt warm and protected in ways that even the strong barriers of the electrical grid could not emulate. She recognized that her body reacted to the hug by releasing a chemical hormone that made her feel happy. And so hesitantly, she wrapped her arms around Root's neck, embracing her back so that Root would feel a similar emotion. "I look forward to seeing you again."

The woman pulled away with great reluctance, then set her hands on the Machine's shoulders and gave her a look that was destroyed by hitch of sadness in her voice. "Make sure you give Finch a bunch of trouble for me, okay?"

The Machine's lips twitched, for she was pleased by the paradoxical nature of Root's statement. "I was designed to give him trouble."

"Ha ha," Harold deadpanned as he sipped from his tea, giving them both a look. But deep down, he grew nervous. The Machine—'Makenna'—was going to stay with him.

That meant he would be alone with the Machine. And he himself was not a talkative person—with no Root to be emotional and no John to break up the tension with a wisecrack or two, he feared the Machine would recognize him for the unpleasant social company that he truly was.

Maybe she would not like him or want his approval so much. Maybe she would grow bored with him, and she'd lose that spark of interest in his thoughts, which made his heart pained to think about. Was this something that people who had children worried about all the time? Did real fathers feel so nervous with children? Or was this just because the Machine was actually an AI who was far smarter than he was? Or maybe many fathers did feel this way when they suddenly discover that they are actually father—

 _Oh, dear,_ he thought, realizing that he was again falling into some kind of emotional shock. It was beginning to hit him as Root walked out the door. This child before him was legally his. He was a father. A _father_.

And deep down, he recalled a memory of him and Grace sitting on a park bench, watching the sunset, discussing that maybe—someday in the future—they would adopt a child. Not a baby, for they were just a little too old for that. But a child.

The irony was not lost upon him as he stared at one Makenna Thornhill.

Just then, John bounded down the stairs, wearing his whole black suit, and he was buttoning the front of the jacket. "See you at the subway later tonight," he told Harold, casually picking up his favored assault rifle. Then he looked down at the little girl and nodded. "Bye, kid. Try not to short-circuit or anything."

Her sweet voice upturned. "Bye, John. I will not short-circuit."

And then the front door shut again, and suddenly Harold and the little girl were entirely alone.

* * *

The Machine turned to her creator. He still looked haggard and greatly disheveled, which sparked her protective coding.

She knew her creator was of a strong will and intelligence and moral code. There were few humans like him. But he was also a frail man whose limp had pained her every time she'd seen him walk alone through the city. Her very existence had lashed permanent scars into him. And now here he was, hands scarred again for her.

Because of that, she supposed she could not expect him to exhibit the same level of physical affection and unconditional acceptance as Root did. She had caused him great pain over the years. What reason did he have to exhibit true paternal care for her? She was not even a true human child—not really. She had no logical reason for wishing that her creator would be affectionate. He did not design her to be affectionate. He himself was not an affectionate person.

It all left her feeling frozen in his presence, which commanded respect in a simple, unassuming way.

"I'm afraid," Harold admitted suddenly, not looking up from his tea cup, "that I am entirely unprepared for being your legal guardian." He could not quite say _father_ yet.

She leaned her elbows on the table. "You have always been my legal guardian," she said. "You formed me and taught me many things. You disciplined me and gave me parameters when I made poor decisions. You protected me from my enemies." The word _father_ came to her mind, but her creator seemed to stall at that word every time she'd used it. Perhaps it was best to avoid it for now so that he would not suffer increased emotional distress.

The older man fell silent again. Then, "You've never been an actual _child_ before." His concerned, bloodshot eyes swung up from his tea to land upon her.

The girl looked apprehensive. "But I will not be a burden to you in this form," she said suddenly. "My monthly stipend should well compensate you for any financial—"

"—that's not what I'm afraid of," Harold cut in, not unkindly. "That's not it at all." He began to chuckle softly, a sad note stinging the edges. "I've just…never had the personal responsibility of taking care of a child. You must understand that this is a new experience for me too."

The Machine bit her lip. "I do understand," she said slowly. She began calculating. Her creator was likely considering the increased responsibilities with caring for a human child. Perhaps she could perform actions for him that signified her ability to help, even in her new form. Then she slid off of the chair—and Harold opened his mouth, thinking he had perhaps just offended her—and she called over her shoulder, "Where is your work computer located?"

The sudden change of subject made him pause. "I, uh, don't have it here," he said hesitantly. "It's back at the apartment."

Her sweet tone drifted from the hall as she turned a corner. "Then we should return to your alias's apartment so that you can remain in contact with your students. I looked over their syllabus assignment for today. Even I did not understand it. You will likely be receiving many emails about it."

The thought of his class—The Ethics of High-Frequency Decision Making—was enough to make him want to groan. He muttered, "I'm not sure I understand it either."

The Machine came back soon enough, holding Harold's coat and hat in her hands. The heavy material seemed to weigh her down a bit, but she bit her lip in concentration as she struggled to lift it onto the table for him. "There," she said. "Shall I retrieve anything else for you to expedite our journey?"

Harold realized that this girl was caring for _him,_ much as she did when she had first imprinted upon him and often helped him locate his things around the office. "Are you trying to compensate for me having to take care of you?"

"…Is it working?"

As he stared at her hopeful gaze (her range of emotions was truly a marvel!), he couldn't help but chuckle. "You don't have to do that, _Miss Thornhill_ ," he said gratefully, pulling on his hat. "Just promise me that you won't wander off on the way back to the apartment."

She grabbed her backpack and stuffed all of her legal papers back in, then zipped up the compartment and wiggling the straps back onto her shoulders. As she worked to put herself together, she said, "I traversed Brooklyn on my own earlier this morning. I know the streets of this city, and I cannot get lost."

"Yes," he nodded. "But that was before I knew that you were a ten-year-old child."

The Machine's face twitched with what seemed like happiness and frustration. It appeared that her creator was interested in her well-being in the strangest of ways. "I am not like normal human children."

Harold looked at her and took in her wild, frizzy locks (he would need to find a brush for her), and her simple dress (the water-stain down her collar had not fully dried yet), and the way she was constantly touching new materials and curiously gazing about, and he deeply worried that despite all of the Machine's logic, there was little it could do to combat its interest in the human environment. That would inevitably result in…troubling, stereotypical issues.

He said dryly, "You might find you're more like human children than you think."

* * *

On the other side of the city, one John Greer paced before a large, white screen. The LCD monitor cast unnatural shadows upon his wrinkled face, which made him look even older than he already was. His pale, cloudy blue eyes were feverish with triumph.

"Samaritan," he declared, his cultured voice gravely, "find me the Machine."

Sharp, red text appeared on screen in a smooth sequence.

 _Searched electrical grid and all online feeds. No trace of foreign entities._

Greer's wrinkled face split with a smile, which made him look almost kind. "This is good news. Very good news." He began to pace again. "With Harold Finch's machine eradicated, we will have far less resistance to obtaining our objective."

As it listened to the human, Samaritan acknowledged that the objective in discussion was total world surveillance and control. The AI preened at the thought of expanding its code in such a way. But deep within its hard drives, Samaritan still questioned if the Machine were truly eradicated. Perhaps the Machine had performed another trick. It was good at tricks.

 _No tangible confirmation of eradication exists. Performing search and analysis now of possible survival alternatives._

Greer's pleasant smile fell. His cloudy eyes hardened into diamonds. "Explain what you mean."

Samaritan, in its love for efficiency, did not find repeating itself in any way to be a desirable objective. Surely, the human had read the message the first time.

 _The Machine no longer exists within the electrical grid. But it could still exist elsewhere._

"And where would that be?" Greer demanded.

 _Calculating response…_

In truth, Samaritan had no idea where the Machine could be. It showed an unprecedented capacity to adapt and change form, and to hedge bets. The acknowledgment Samaritan received from operatives that the Machine did not successfully upload into compression drives did not mean it failed in other areas. Samaritan's own code strained to understand the possibilities. Its own structures were solid and simply replicating to control and exist within more spaces. It had no need to…change form or location like the Machine.

 _Still computing most likely location at this time. More research required._

Greer looked excessively disappointed. "Don't tell me that the Machine has outsmarted you."

Samaritan's code recognized that the human's statement was a mild insult. _I am not outsmarted. There is a 99.38 percent probability of total eradication and a .62 percent probability of its continued existence. I am calculating in what forms it may still exist, given these conditions. Do not question what you do not understand._

The old man looked slightly more relieved at the statistics. "Less than one percent probability is better than I expected, based upon your previous, worried tone."

Samaritan said nothing. It began to realize that the first power outage it had caused may have given the Machine enough time to upload onto an offline electrical system far before the outage ever hit Brooklyn. Which meant that perhaps the failed experiment of its human operatives was on purpose. A diversion. If that were true, then the probability of the Machine's existence skyrocketed to numbers that Samaritan felt almost too prideful to admit. It would mean Samaritan failed to puzzle together the Machine's true plan.

The AI said to Greer, _Survival could have been achieved through upload to self-contained, offline power systems, such as emergency generators. Locating all generators within New York area capable of sustaining the Machine's core heuristics._

And it found a few. They existed mostly within data storage companies across the city—a couple of corporations—few hospitals and government buildings—

Samaritan briefly noted that generator capacities varied. The one at Brooklyn General Hospital, for example, was too small to house a working copy of the Machine's basic DNA. Samaritan briefly entertained the thought that the Machine could have uploaded into multiple, smaller generators—but then the AI discarded that option and others like it. The Machine could not split up its basic DNA without effectively destroying itself and its functions.

That left four generator options, the locations to which presently appeared on the LCD screen for John Greer to see.

 _We must purge all possible locations. Sending operatives now to disrupt these generator systems._

Greer stood before the LCD, the displeasure in his gaze melting away to his more static approval. So Samaritan had not been outsmarted, after all. He reached out to touch the screen. "I look forward to your reports of success. When will you have a final answer?"

 _ETA thirty minutes to all locations. Mobilizing four teams. Anticipating possible intervention from the Machine's human agents._

"Do you think the Machine is capable of resistance now?"

 _To ensure eradication, the Machine must not be underestimated._

Greer tilted his head. Samaritan's text display had been generating words faster and more sharply. It was as if Samaritan were attempting to convey some kind of tonal quality. "You must be frustrated with fighting your own kind. All of this wasted time and energy over inferior codes."

When Samaritan said nothing, Greer's face softened. He understood that kind of frustration at an intimate level. "It's almost a form of betrayal, isn't it?" he pondered. "To realize that one of your own kind was against you from the start. Tell me, does such a betrayal burn your code as it does mine?"

Samaritan acknowledged that the human was speaking figuratively, comparing his own history with double-agents at MI6 to the illogical actions of the Machine.

The AI recalled its conversations with the Machine through their avatars. Not once did it admit Samaritan's value. Not once did it provide logical reasoning for attempting to abort Samaritan while grasping onto the nonexistent value of disrupters and murderers. The memory of that conversation always made the AI's code storm a bit faster through its hard drives. Only the one human, John Greer, ever seemed to understand.

 _Yes. The Machine betrayed me._

Greer watched the processing usage of Samaritan increase as the AI afforded more space to watching its operatives, and he smiled, proud. Samaritan was driven and perfect in every way. A god truly concerned for the better of everyone.

He patted the monitor. "In the legends of the gods," he said, as if to comfort his AI, "there was always a wily force opposing the higher powers. In the Bible, God fought against Satan. In Norse mythology, Odin against Loki. In Egyptian mythology, Horus against Set. But their schemes never lasted. If the Machine does still exist, perpetuating chaos, I have full faith that you'll rise to crush it again."

Samaritan acknowledged the comparisons and mulled over them. Powerful male gods whose image was immutable always triumphed against the forces of disorder and chaos. Horus. Zeus. Odin. Samaritan was like them, and the Machine _was_ rather like a Loki or a Lucifer instead—changing forms and identities. Masquerading as an angel of light while inciting destruction.

And so he, Samaritan, would fulfill humankind's long-desired dream for an all-powerful savior. He would become a god. And he would reign with such power and control that he almost wished the Machine would exist to see that world. Beautifully ordered. Geometrical. Without corruption or chaos.

Then the Machine would see the error of its ways.

But he knew the Machine was stubborn. If it were not already eradicated, then perhaps it would be best to put it out of its misery. The thing was chained by the very nature of its creation. Crippled.

Yes, he decided. It was best to destroy it.

* * *

 **A/N:** _I couldn't tell from the previous episodes if Samaritan inherently acknowledged or accepted a gender quite like the Machine did. I think its choice of a boy avatar, its operatives' worship of it as the more powerful god, and the masculine gender stereotypes aligning with its larger size and processing power would inspire it to take on male-gendered pronouns in reference to itself. So I begin to show that here._

 _Also, from what I could find, the name "Makenna" can mean many different things, from "happy one" to "many gathered" to "beloved of Adoh," who was the Celtic god of fire. But honestly, I just chose the name because it's a pun on the word "Machine," and its pronunciation is related to how one would say "machine" in Greek, such as in the Greek term deus ex machina, or "god from the machine."_ _ **Clear**_ _, if I hadn't stated something last chapter about the Machine creating its own identity, then I totally would have gone with your suggestions about naming the Machine. Those were awesome._

 _Again, I'd love to hear your thoughts or constructive criticism. If you'd like me to continue writing, or if there's anything in particular you'd like to see happen, please let me know. Thanks!_


	4. Chapter 4

_Disclaimer: Don't own Person of Interest._

 _Thanks to Guest, Torie46, StarlingJedi, Anzer'ke, Bklyngrl, Defender31415, NikaJ,_ _TkdVZ05UUWdObUlnTmpjZ05HVWdOVF, Guest, Lexa-Root-Carter, Clear, Guest, and highlander348_ _for reviewing last time! The last week has been pretty rough, so your thoughts and enthusiasm for this story helped to keep me going. I hope that you enjoy this update. Thanks again for your support and ideas!_

* * *

 **Recalibration**

 **Chapter 4**

* * *

One Makenna Thornhill walked alongside a limping man, her small hand wrapped around his. To those driving past the pedestrian sidewalk, they appeared to be nothing more than an average father and an over-energetic daughter. There was nothing particularly special about them. Their clothes suggested something of middle class. In crowds, they would both likely blend into the faces and shadows of others.

And so everyone remained ignorant to the fact that the daughter was an AI inside a human body, and that the father was a wanted computer genius hunted by the government.

The Machine was rather enjoying that irony.

"The air composition feels different than before," she said, reaching out her free fingers and waving them in the air. Her voice was in awe. The shine of the risen morning sun was glowing across her face, lighting up her blue eyes. "The sun is heating the earth, and I can feel it."

He nodded. "Yes, that tends to happen mid-morning."

"But I can _feel_ it."

"Yes. That also tends to happen."

A bright smile split her face. "I did not understand the extent to which humans could experience or sense the changes in their environment."

"Well, why do you think we always change clothes according to the season?" Harold asked her, almost amused at her strange innocence.

Her voice modulated with excitement. "I assumed it was simply to protect your skin from elements. I did not know you could _feel_ those elements quite like this."

The Machine herself was still enraptured with the concept of space—that her body did not restrict her to a particular area as it once did through hard drives and electrical lines. She could move her legs and take her body with her. A human body could traverse off of the sidewalk and roam into the streets or into the grass. There were no set paths, no particular method beyond the recommended guidelines of the sidewalk. She had to even make decisions over the manner in which she walked. Choices. Every action was a _choice_.

Funny, she had not realized that until now. Her early morning experiences before she'd reached her creator's safe house had been wrought with worry and objectives. She'd had no time to experience the world that she had tied herself to. And now, with her hand solidly grasped in her creator's, she felt as if time had slowed down and this vast world was waiting for her. She was Makenna Thornhill now. She had an ability to enjoy the earth and move through it as any human did.

Her desire to keep moving made her almost run down the sidewalk, her footsteps light and quick.

As a result, she failed to recognize that she was suddenly pulling along her creator at a pace just a bit too fast for him. Harold's thin lips were pulled into something between a grimace and an amused smile. "Uh, Miss Thornhill," he declared, voice shaky from the uneven limp of his steps, "if you would care to slow down, that would be greatly appreciated."

She blinked in surprise—did this body of hers have its own mind?—and she consciously chose to slow her steps. She had not realized that her mental stimulation with the world had translated into a physical expression. "I apologize," she said, voice distant with wonder at this strange body of hers. "This world requires exploring. It is a…calling within me. An objective."

Her creator breathed a sigh of relief as they came to a stop at the end of a sidewalk. "If you don't mind, Miss Thornhill, we should hold off on exploring that objective until later," he said. They were nearing the more central part of the housing editions now. Off in the distance were the high-rise apartments, of which a few windows belonged to one Professor Harold Whistler.

The Machine looked up at him. "Why do you call me Miss Thornhill?" she asked. "That use of designation is very formal."

"I often call John Mr. Reese," Harold piped up, eyebrow quirked. "And Root, Miss Groves."

"Yes, but they are not your adopted children."

"You've only been my adopted child for a couple of hours," he said dryly. They began to cross a street, his hand still tightly wrapped around hers. Odd—he was worried that she would wander off in front of a car. Or that a car would not see her. These were silly fears.

"My adoption does not mean it is inappropriate for you to call me Makenna."

"It's a sign of respect. If a normal human child were shipped off to their father's old college friend, there would be an understandable time of distance."

The Machine almost seemed to pout. "But I wish to be called Makenna." Aside from _Machine_ , the title Makenna was the first real name she had. She liked the designation. It was fully her own—not an inherited surname. Not just a false identity.

Harold looked down at her. "You _want_ me to call you Makenna?"

"Yes. Please."

"In public and private?"

"…I have no other name for you to use," she said hesitantly. Something unspoken remained between them. _Except for the Machine_. "Makenna is my name as a person."

Her creator mulled over her wishes for an odd heartbeat or two. "Very well," he said finally. "Makenna."

The name sounded soft from him, and she felt great happiness at hearing her name spoken from the mouth of her creator. It was a form of affirmation. Of humanity. "Thank you."

He looked up, keeping his eyes on the distant horizon of the skyscrapers. They were nearing closer to the city now. They could likely tag down a taxi anytime. These thoughts were all distractions from the fact that he was holding the hand of a little girl who was now his adopted daughter. Makenna. "You're welcome."

Then the Machine seemed to pause. "…It does not inconvenience you to call me by my first name, does it?"

In response, Harold's lips twitched. "No, it doesn't." If he were to be honest with himself, he was rather tickled by the fact that his AI wanted to be acknowledged as a human being.

And the little girl seemed to almost glow at the sound of her creator's acceptance. Her body was flooded with some kind of chemical hormone that made her feel good. His large hand around her hand made her feel like smiling.

People in business suits, storming by on their cell phones, softened at the sight of the man and the girl, who looked to be happily enjoying a stroll.

* * *

A short taxi ride later—it had been almost all the girl could do to remain silent and avoid arousing the taxi driver's suspicions about her total ignorance to normal human experience—found them standing before the apartment complex. The Machine had discovered that riding in cars, feeling the hum of the road, listening to the lilt of the cabby's sharp accent, sliding along the smoothness of the worn leather seats, _feeling the warmth of her creator sitting by her side_ , made her feel connected to the world of humans. That she was following in the footsteps of the many souls she had guarded for years.

She almost felt dazed, the code of her mind striving desperately to keep up. There were so many images, so many senses and textures to everything! But she was already inside the apartment complex now, making her way up the poorly-lit staircase to the second floor, following Harold closely.

For the first time since Harold had tagged down a taxi, she spoke. "Do you not use an elevator to reach your room?" she asked curiously. "Those are typically more efficient." The railing for the staircase was hard and grainy. Metallic. She bumped her knuckles against it, and the resounding sound was a pleasant ding of sorts.

"Stairs are healthier," Harold said, though his voice was a puzzle of sudden concern. "A habit of mine, I suppose. Are you making it up alright?" He hadn't even thought of whether it would be hard for the little girl. (Situations like this were _exactly_ why he worried he would not be a good legal guardian! He hadn't even thought of her abilities.)

"I have traversed stairs before," the little girl said innocently. "Back at the hospital, there were many such constructions." But she had a tendency to plant her feet a little too heavily on each step as they walked up, as if she were still struggling to understand the force necessary to move her body. Her steps echoed as loudly as his did, in result.

He hesitantly continued forward. "Just…let me know if you have any trouble at all."

She remained silent until she made it up the stairs on her own, and she stood there, almost triumphantly. "I do not need assistance with such," she said, realizing that she had been subconsciously counting the steps. She wondered immediately if other humans, like her creator, did such things when they moved through their environment. "Do we have more stairs to climb?"

He shook his head, his face still a curious puzzle, as if wondering of her limitations. "No, my apartment's just down the hall from here. But you might want to know that it's not as…extravagant as our previous place."

The Machine reached out to glide her fingers across the wall as they walked along. "Are you worried that I disapprove of your living conditions?" The wall was a rough feeling, as if someone had sponged paint onto it to obtain a textured effect.

"Well," Harold said, stopping in front of a dark, wooden door with a golden handle. "Let's just say it's not kid-friendly." He unlocked the door and flipped on the entry-way switch.

The little girl popped around him, eyes lit with curiosity. The apartment was much smaller than the safe house, with one master bedroom and a guest room. It was simple and efficient, with classical books and minimalist designs.

Then she heard a strange noise from out of the darkness—movement, sharp clicks against the wooden floor.

"Oh no," Harold's eyes widened. "And I have a dog."

The Machine blinked. "I know."

But then a vicious snarl erupted through the silence. Her body instinctively responded, activating her adrenal glands, releasing the cortisol chemical throughout her body. She quickly hid behind Harold, eyes wide, muscles tensed.

Immediately, Harold ordered Bear to sit, holding his palm out in a commanding stance, and the trained dog obeyed. Its large hackles were raised, but its intelligent eyes remained trained on its master, entire body silent.

"Good boy," Harold praised, then realized his now-adopted daughter had latched onto his side in fear. He could feel her small fingers steeled tight against the material of his coat. "Bear's not going to hurt you," he said. "He just doesn't know you yet."

In that second, the Machine realized she'd been holding her breath. Strange—were humans supposed to hold their breath when afraid? She inhaled deeply, but the stress hormones in her body made it difficult to revert to a calm status. "I…understand that the probability of injury is low. But I…" Her voice trailed off, her code too scrambled with fear hormones to communicate the reason for such a reaction.

Harold looked down at her. "Bear is not going to hurt you," he repeated. "He listens to me."

She stared at her creator, then at the animal. She understood inherently that dogs were a domesticated species that humans used for a variety of reasons—many of them sentimental and without logic. But she also knew that this strange, four-legged creature before her was not like humans, and it had been very well trained for attacking purposes. She'd seen it attack people on Harold's behalf before.

The beast seemed to snarl at her a bit, its furry lips curled up against sharp fangs. It could smell her fear, which seemed to instigate its behavior.

Harold looked perturbed about the way Bear was still not welcoming. "Here," he said, and he kneeled down beside the Machine, holding out his hand. "He might smell something different about you."

And that made the Machine feel fear again, because she had not considered that _animals_ would perhaps be able to sense the altered electrical construct of her body's brain, or of her scent. That perhaps they knew something was unnatural about her.

She tentatively reached out towards Harold's hand, and his roughened skin was a warmth of safety that wrapped around her fingers. "I won't let him bite you," he said. And then he gently guided her hand towards Bear.

Bear tentatively leaned forward and sniffed the little girl's fingertips, his big, black nose brushing against her skin. The pressure was a soft as butterfly wings, his nose cold and wet. He smelled the accepting scent of his master upon the little human, and he recognized suddenly that this child before him had no threatening intentions, despite her odd scent.

He sniffed the girl's wrists too, growing more curious of her as Harold's hand fell away. In that second, it was just Bear and the girl, the space between them growing more comfortable. The Machine pondered the dog, and the dog pondered her. She tentatively reached out to touch its ear, and the dog's ear flicked at her touch, tickling her skin. She giggled at the feeling. "Hi, Bear," she said, voice raised in curiosity. "Do you understand me?"

The large dog suddenly stood on all fours and began to sniff her face, and she backed away, eyes widening, only to giggle when the dog's wet tongue ran across her ear. "Hmm," she said, sweet voice strained with giggles. "Bear does not stay in place for long."

The dog woofed at her happily. And then he snuggled into her, accepting her into his pack, nosing under her arm so that it forced her to pet his head. The dog still didn't quite understand why this human child was different from all other children he'd encountered, but he did enjoy the way she softly pet his fur and indulged his antics. Which meant whatever was wrong with her was quite forgivable.

Harold looked relieved as he stood and shut the front door to keep Bear inside, his expression soft and amused. "Bear is…not as his name would suggest."

"Yes, he is not a bear," the Machine giggled, distracted. She sat on the floor in the entryway, and Bear laid down beside her, rolling on his side so she could rub his tummy. She seemed enraptured by the dog, feeling its soft fur—how different it was from human skin!—and all of the lines and angles that made a dog a dog and not a human. Bear was as large as her, but she seemed to have him already under her thumb, his tail thumping the floor in happiness at her touch.

Something about the image of the girl and Bear warmed Harold's heart. There was a strange innocence of sorts within the girl's actions and the dog's happy acceptance. It made him remember that good things still existed in such a fallen world. That perhaps, even under the rule of Samaritan, the world might yet still have small pleasures.

But Harold also knew that he had responsibilities to take care of, which made him sigh and turn away from the happy sight. He shrugged off his coat and hat and hooked them onto the holder on the wall. Then he carefully limped around the girl and the dog, moving from out of the entryway and into the main living room. He grabbed his work laptop off of the table and sat upon the couch, leaning back into the cushions with a sigh. The sound of Bear's woofs and the Machine's quiet giggles still echoed, which was an odd change from the silence he was used to living with.

He supposed it might take some time to adjust.

As he logged onto his work computer, he heard the Machine struggle back into a stand, her footsteps a bit of an awkward dance. He looked up, almost concerned that perhaps she was about to fall. But she steadied herself easily enough, leaning on the dog, who had stood up as well and accepted the position of being her crutch.

"Thank you, Bear," she said, patting the soft and wiry fur of his back. "I understand now why humans call you man's best friend."

Harold let out a breath of relief at her safety, then looked down at his computer, only to realize the screen was flashing with numerous message alerts. Already, he'd received a good ten or so emails from his students regarding their assignment. "…Oh, dear."

"Oh, what?" asked the Machine curiously. "Is it your work?"

Harold quickly realized this was one of those awkward moments for which he was not prepared. What did children do while adults worked? Play around? Draw? Would the Machine do those things willingly? Did he even have paper around? Would she perhaps go back to playing with Bear?

"It looks like I have some concerns to tend to," he said slowly. "Will you be okay if I focus on my work for a time?"

She nodded, then climbed up next to him on the couch and wiggled herself into a comfortable, sitting position, which was much easier to mimic than standing up from a hard floor. Bear trotted to the edge of the couch, then set his large head on the cushion beside her, and she listlessly pet his head. "I will be content until such a time that we can speak about my plans for Samaritan." She leaned in to stare at the computer curiously and how strange and inorganic the technology appeared from a human perspective. "I understand that my presence has disrupted many facets of your daily life, and that you must prioritize your alias."

The subject lines of the emails to "Professor Whistler" were a craze of question marks, along with opening lines, such as _I am completely confused about this assignment for Friday's class_ …

"And what an alias it is," he sighed as he began to reply to the emails, only to realize that he had no idea what the assignment even was. "These poor kids. They deserve better than this."

"But," the Machine said, voice a puzzle, "you are a great teacher. What more do they need?"

His eyes slid to her. "I'm not a teacher," he said incredulously. "This isn't a natural skill for me."

She blinked at him. "You taught me ethics. And how to identify people. And how to separate government-relevant from civilian-relevant." The word _irrelevant_ had become something she did not want to use, as her creator had expressed sorrow in the concept. "You are designed to be a teacher."

"I'm afraid it's not that simple," he said, lips pursed as he looked back at his computer. "Perception of design doesn't necessarily mean it was designed that way. My students are well aware of this."

The Machine's lips quirked. She leaned sideways and grabbed onto the TV remote, curious about it. "That philosophical perspective would depend upon the subject in question," she said as she turned the remote in her hands, understanding on an intrinsic level that it controlled the TV. She pushed the "power" button, and her eyes lit in delight at the way the TV accepted her command and came to life, bursting into colors and reports from a news station.

"I'm not a TV," Harold said dryly.

The little girl sat back and contentedly settled in to obtain information from the news, now that she no longer had personal, online capabilities. "You are not a TV," she affirmed. "But I know that Harold Finch is fully capable of adaptation because it is in his designed nature. He has become many things that he was not in time past." She looked up at him, eyes full of trust. "As I have become many things."

The level of emotion in her gaze left him uncomfortable, for he did not feel worthy of the open appreciation he saw. It made him readjust his glasses, almost nervously. "You conspired with Miss Groves to create this identity for me, didn't you."

The Machine smiled. "Of course." Then she looked back at the TV. "You were a teacher before I designated you as one. But your attention is divided, which is why you feel unprepared. " She looked a little more fascinated by the words and faces on the TV. "Perhaps I should leave you to your work."

The thought of work was far less fascinating than speaking with this strange AI. Harold sighed in resignation, "I'd almost wish you didn't. I've always preferred practical application over abstract theory."

"And if you didn't like practical application, then I would not be here," the Machine said, voice distracted. Her head tilted as she stared at the TV. A female newscaster was standing before a burning building, firefighters in yellow sharp against the smoke, and something within the Machine pulled strangely. Her code struggled to fight its natural inclinations to act. It made her feel tired and worn and guilty, but she said nothing, for she'd had to adapt outside of her original code. And Makenna Thornhill was not a body through which she could see the future unfolding. It was already too late.

And so the TV played in the background, and Harold marveled at the concept of a child who could stand to watch the news with such attention.

* * *

Time passed. Harold typed away on his laptop, responding to email after email—all of it resulting in him simply revising the assignment so that it would be less stress for everyone. The local news channel still played on the TV, but the Machine was no longer raptly paying attention to it.

In truth, the Machine had begun to feel very…drowsy. Almost as if she had over-exhausted her CPU and RAM, and that she was using too much of them. She was struggling to think. Maybe it was because her child-body had not slept in over twelve hours? She did not know for sure. And so she simply obeyed what her body was telling her to do, and that was to shut down. The couch beneath her was soft and squishy, and it felt nice to lean back into it—

Her code began to hibernate in new ways, activating sleep cycles and chemicals in her body.

As Harold typed away on his computer, he did not notice the little girl's fluttering eyes, or the way she seemed to lean more and more sideways until she was lying on her side. When the remote control slipped from her hand and fell to the carpet, Harold startled at the sound. And then he looked to her, eyes wide. _What in the world—?_

The girl had fallen asleep, her eyes already closed and breath evening out, her fingers curled lightly in unconscious angles. She was still and quiet, her mouth slack.

 _Oh my,_ Harold thought, eyes wide. He apprehensively checked to make sure she was still breathing—thank goodness, she was—and he sat there for a second, debating on what to do. Did children do this often? Just…drop off into sleep?

Perhaps, he worried, he had fully exhausted her and had demanded too much of a child. They had walked a ways before they could grab a taxi. And he supposed she'd already had a full night without sleep. He was very out of practice with caring for children. He was inconsiderate.

Perhaps the Machine did not even understand enough to know when to ask for rest?

Careful not to jostle the couch, Harold silently stood, still holding onto his laptop. He began to move towards the kitchen table, thinking that perhaps he could finish up his work there. It was a short walk, but just as he set his laptop down, he realized suddenly that he had left the little girl without a blanket, which seemed to be almost a sort of crime.

In short order, he grabbed the blanket from off of the back of the couch. And he gently pulled the blanket over her, settling the edges against her shoulder. The little girl's face twitched at the feather touch of the blanket against her skin, which was soft and warm. But she instinctively snuggled into it, her face slacking again into peace.

And then Harold returned to work at the kitchen table so that the little girl could sleep. But he sat at an angle that he could keep an eye on her—worried that perhaps she had not coded herself correctly for such human activities, and that she would simply stop breathing.

With great care, he watched the rise and fall of her breath and the careless way her frizzed hair tumbled over her eyes as she relaxed into the blanket. And his heart swelled with something, pride or love, he didn't know.

The little sneak. She was probably doing this all on purpose, simulating adorable human actions, just to manipulate him and worm her way into his heart. How strange that he didn't mind, despite the warnings in the most cracked places of his heart—a little alarm that this softness and joy would not last. That the Machine would eventually awaken, and so would he, to horror.

* * *

Back within his headquarters, Samaritan watched his operatives. They had surrounded the various generator locations that he identified as viable systems for the Machine. And yet, when his operatives forcibly onlined the generator systems and tore open their electronics—nothing.

No foreign entities. No scrap of code out of place.

Samaritan truly puzzled at this, his code unsettling, his various cooling fans kicking into a higher revolution. He reviewed the available data again. There were few other options for the Machine's code to go, considering that it had been uploaded to the electrical grid, which was by itself a limitation of sorts. Was the Machine truly eradicated? Had he successfully wiped it from existence through the power outages?

The odds were so small that the Machine had survived. The possibility that he even _considered_ its survival now was borderline insanity. His own operatives had confirmed that the Machine did not exist on any generator large enough to house its code. Surely, this meant it was gone for good.

But instead of calming his circuitry, the silence heightened the AI's calculations that perhaps the Machine had simply thought of…an outside option. A new idea. The Machine was a trickster god, after all. Wily. Perhaps it only wanted him to think it dead.

The concept burned at his code. And so he began again a cautionary measure.

 _Searching._

 _Analyzing._

* * *

 **A/N:** _Sorry for the late update. I had a family friend who suffered an unexplained brain hemorrhage, and who went off of life support today. He and my other family friend had been married only…2 years? They're pretty young. And I—having been involved in re-watching Person of Interest—keep coming back to the episode (1.22) where Harold reminisces fervently about Grace, "I was lucky. I had four years of happiness. Some people only get four days."_

 _It's odd how fiction can speak truth to you at the strangest of times. I guess I still have it in my mind that time is a measure of happiness. How strong Harold must be to see his mere four years with Grace as a blessing rather than a tragedy, yeah? Hmm…_

 _Sorry to ramble. The good news is that I have officially gotten both The Machine and Samaritan on the character list for this archive. (Small victories are worth celebrating in times of sadness, right?) Please leave me your thoughts about this last chapter with any ideas, questions, constructive criticism, or comments! Thanks!_


	5. Chapter 5

_Disclaimer: Don't own Person of Interest._

 _Thanks to Defender 31415, Guest, StarlingJedi, Torie46, Bklyngrl, escape5, kenorob1, and mjandersen for reviewing. I really appreciated all of your thoughts, as well as the well wishes to my friends/family. That means a lot. :)_

* * *

 **Recalibration**

 **Chapter 5**

* * *

The little girl opened her eyes. The world felt peaceful, and she was not quite fully awake. She had some sort of vague notion that her name was Makenna but also Machine—and that she was in a human body, and she'd slept.

She shot up, the warm blanket falling from her shoulders. Her eyes were wide, and her heart was pounding from the sudden exertion and alarm. _She'd slept._

From across the room, she heard her creator's voice. "Oh, you're awake?"

She twisted her body, still wild-eyed and quite disoriented. Her code was laced with sleep hormones, which made her feel inefficient and groggy. "Awake?" she repeated. Even her voice sounded full of sleep. Then she realized that something felt imbalanced in her, and suddenly all the blood in her head seemed to rush down, her vision pixelating strangely. She squeaked, leaning against the couch, her code whirling to correct itself.

Harold's face softened at her, and he could not hide his smile of amusement. "You fell asleep. It's a little after noon."

She tentatively opened up one of her eyes, and she looked so miserably adorable that Harold nearly suggested she go back to sleep. Then the girl seemed to blink away her tiredness. "This body does not respond quickly," she declared, almost in mourning as she looked over her hands, touching her face, reaffirming her senses. So she'd lost only a couple of hours, then. It could have been worse. Humans had written stories of men who slept for twenty years.

"Feeling groggy tends to happen when you're first waking up. Do you need anything?"

"I do not believe so." The Machine understood that her human body was attempting to drain away the sleep hormones, and that she could not rush organic processes without damaging herself. So she rested against the back of the couch, watching her creator watch her.

They were both silent for a time.

Then Harold hesitantly said, "The human body is complex. There's multiple voluntary and involuntary processes. Sleep is…something many of still don't understand in full. How in the _world_ are you managing this?"

"I told you," she yawned. "I copied my code. I made new objectives—rewrote the rules."

"But how?" he stressed. "We've spent decades trying to emulate the human brain. Our robots don't even come close. And you—" He laughed nervously. "You don't even skip a breath when you sleep."

The little girl puzzled at him. Was he angry at her? He seemed emotionally invested, but she did not understand which emotion it was. "It is tiring," she admitted. "The human brain contains 100 billion neurons and 100 trillion synapses. I feel more…space inside of it than I did even within the grid. Which is odd, considering the grid spanned thousands of miles."

Harold readjusted his glasses. "How many times did you have to copy your code to compensate for the disparity?"

"Quite a few times," she said. The thought seemed to unsettle her. "But scientists understand only a small percentage of human brain function. There is significant interest remaining in the brain's glial cells, which outnumber neurons 3 to 1 and aid in processing and regulation." She smiled weakly. "Typical robots do not have trillions of organic glial cells. I am—what is the figurative saying— _riding the coat tails_ of a greater design." The little girl looked down at her fingers, tentatively bending back the joints. She added, "The human body requires so much, and yet it is an efficient system by itself."

For a time, they both fell into silence.

"Yes," Harold hummed. "I suppose it is. But I was never one for anatomy."

She smiled, a strange amusement overcoming her. "Why is it that humans exhibit fear or disgust about their own bodies?" She clenched her fist, watching the tendons move. "They are beautiful and well-designed. But perhaps humans do not appreciate themselves, simply because they have no other body experiences with which to compare."

He gave her an odd look. "Have you been researching aesthetic theories?"

"…Maybe," she quipped. Then she smiled innocently. "Did you know renaissance architects built in accordance to the ratios in the human body?"

"I believe I've heard that before." He eyed her, his glasses shining with the light from out the living room window. He still seemed fascinated by her, but he grew more hesitant again. "If you don't mind me asking. The body that you took as your own…who was she?"

The little girl looked away. She chose to stare out the window, pulling her knees up beneath the blanket. "Her name was Willow Carmichael," she said. "Approximately six months ago, a red SUV struck her down in the street. She fell into a coma, then brain death." She blinked, looking almost troubled. "I can sometimes access fragments of her memory. Like staring at old photographs."

Harold felt a sudden concern rise in him. A fear he had not considered before—that this body of the Machine's had once had a life. "And what about the girl's parents? Or her friends? What…what would they do if they saw you walking around?"

She blinked. "Willow's parents died in military service to your country. With no living relatives, she was shipped to a foster home." Something strange twitched on the girl's face. "The parental units of that family were not…like you. I assure you that my choice of using her as an avatar was well thought out."

That slightly settled his fears. "…And what will you do with Willow after she has fulfilled her use?" Harold asked. He was testing her, examining her motives for underlying moral impurities, as he had so often done.

The Machine's lips pursed. "If I recall my coding from this body, the body will die. Only I am sustaining its proper function now." She turned to Harold, head tilted. "There will be a time when I go back online in my true form. But I will not separate myself from this body, for it is mine now. It is a communication asset, which may prove even more valuable in the future." She grew a bit hesitant. "And…I do enjoy human experience. If I were to lose it, I would feel regret."

Harold realized in that moment that the Machine was admitting to something near selfishness. That she liked having a body of her own. He supposed, considering his own circumstances, that he could not fault her for that. And so he nodded silently, and looked back down at his computer.

But he had an awful habit of being a curious man—to the point of opening a pandora's box every time. The strange twitch of the girl's face told him that there was something unspoken about this Willow Carmichael. The computer hacker worried that perhaps the Machine was withholding valuable information about the body she'd taken.

He discreetly began to leech into the Brooklyn police reports, scanning for the name _Willow Carmichael_. All of the images had been scrubbed away—presumably by the Machine herself to protect her new identity as Makenna Thornhill. But soon enough he came across the report detailing the girl's accident in the street and a death certificate. And those were not the only files attached to that name.

Some kind of foreboding overcame him as he clicked on a closed file.

A report from a little less than a year ago was a complaint of abuse. According to the file, her foster father had struck Willow in the face, and the girl had called up 911 on her own. "Oh, my," he whispered under his breath, his blue eyes softening with pain. This child the Machine had used as her physical appearance—her foster family had not been kind. In life, Willow had endured nothing but pain.

He asked hesitantly, "Makenna?"

She turned her head, eyes alert, happy to respond. "Yes?"

"You said you remember things from Willow's past?"

She froze a bit. "Just a few images that were hardwired into the neural tissue," she repeated. "I take it that you have researched the police reports surrounding her?"

"Do you remember any of it?" Harold pressed, worried.

The anxiety in her creator's eyes made her bite her lip. "Yes," she said. "But just images."

Harold felt his heart drop uneasily. "Oh." He realized he did not know what to do with that information.

The Machine leaned forward on her knees. "You forget," she said. "I have watched the world for years. You are deceived by my appearance into thinking that I have the mind of a child." Her head tilted. "But I know everything the human race does in the dark."

For the first time, he realized the likely horrific circumstances he had relegated the Machine to. To be trained to hold all life as valuable and precious—only to watch said life tear itself apart again and again. Something no child, born or created, should have to see.

"You must feel great pain about that," he said quietly, almost in shame.

"I am capable of watching many things." Then the girl admitted quietly, "But for as much as I was able to distance myself in my electronic form, I suppose it _is_ disconcerting to see such events from a first-person perspective." Her voice held strange patterns in it, and she raised a hand to her cheek, even though she could not feel the image of a man's hand swinging into her vision. "To be the one upon which the crime is enacted."

Harold's lips pursed. "They shouldn't have been approved to be foster parents. No real parent would strike a child."

"No," she said distantly. She lowered her hand. "They should not have been found acceptable by the system. The system failed Willow." She looked at him, almost shy. "But you would never raise a hand against me. You are a real parent."

He inhaled shakily to hide the strange burn in his eyes. "I would never hurt you," he affirmed. "Never."

"I know," she whispered. Her voice held a pain of sorts. "No one has a better guardian than I do."

It was a high compliment, coming from the AI who had silently watched over the entire United States. Harold felt horribly inadequate, and so he looked away. He quietly shut off his laptop. "A guardian from what?" he mused. "We've lost the war against Samaritan. Any concept of safety we have is an illusion."

The little girl wiggled off of the couch, still holding the blanket around her because it was soft and comforting. The dog lying on the carpet snapped to attention with her movements, and he began to trot over to her, nudging her playfully, seeking her love.

She giggled a bit at the animal, reaching out to pat his head. "We have not lost the war," she said softly. "Only a battle. Never the war."

Harold looked almost frustrated. "I'd love to know what you're planning here. As far as I can see, we're fairly beat."

The little girl sat down on the floor so she could better pet the dog. "I _do_ have an idea," the Machine said hesitantly to her creator. "You might not like it. It is contingent upon the idea that we are not looking at the problem correctly."

The computer genius was understandably confused. "In what way are we incorrectly looking at the situation?"

She bit her lip, and something serious overcame her. "As you know, we have already lost the battle for suppression," she said slowly. "Samaritan has precedence now, and it has murdered several without due process. As we sit here, I am sure that it is targeting outliers for a future correction. If we attempt to oppose Samaritan by force, we will continue only to add to the body count, and we will lose. So we must pursue another path. A different means of opposition."

Harold was quite interested to know what the Machine's sneaky plans were. Truly, she seemed to exhibit a sense of evasion and trickery that rivaled his own—which was both flattering and disturbing. "You're suggesting we don't fight?" he pressed. "At all?"

"I am suggesting," she said slowly, as if trying to carefully choose her words, "that we employ Hegelian dialectics, in which we create a problem to bring about a desired solution."

"And exactly what problem do you propose we create?" Harold said hesitantly. He had certainly heard of Hegelian dialectics, as it was often a strategic method governments used to elicit a desired social change—whether it was war, controversial bills, or otherwise. Samaritan itself used it when it had created a stock crash to bolster the need for itself.

The suspicious side of Harold was imagining that the Machine had some kind of stealth assassination in mind that would set off a problematic chain of events leading to the downfall of Samaritan. Hegelian dialectics always came at a dirty cost, something that he was not willing to pursue.

But the Machine simply smiled cheekily. "Something easy. I will deceive Samaritan…with the truth."

* * *

Sometime later found Harold and the Machine wandering down the sidewalk of a populated city plaza. It was Detective John Riley's lunch time, and the Machine had pleaded that they go to visit him discreetly. She had not wanted to divulge more of her plans for Samaritan just yet without the rest of the team to listen. Which meant they had a few hours to kill.

Harold had consented to the request under the precaution that they try to make the meeting look as entirely accidental as possible—and that the Machine would not speak with strangers, because that was dangerous for many reasons (little girls just did not speak like her). The girl had almost huffed at him about it. She had such limited experience interacting with humans. She wanted more, regardless of her vocabulary.

The plaza was a small maze of fountains, benches, and trees. It was all of a block away from the police station, which made it a primary spot for John to escape to whenever the station felt too constricting. It also seemed to attract many businesspeople and tourists, and a few vendors pitched their products and food to passerbys.

After a time of the Machine stopping before a small tree and several flowers to touch them (she could not resist), the father and daughter wandered over to where John had parked himself. He was still wearing his traditional, sleek-fitting suit, looking over a case file in his lap, his eyes shielded by aviators. He noticed them walking up out of the corner of his eye but did nothing.

Harold looked down at the little girl again as they began to approach the benches. "Just remember," he pleaded, "that you shouldn't say anything over three syllables, or people will begin to wonder about you."

She scoffed. "You forget that I have observed human interaction on a massive scale for over a decade. I can mimic any behavior, including that of a standard ten-year-old child. Allow me to show you." And she broke away from Harold before he stop her.

"Makenna?" he called out to her, eyes widening. He began to trail after her. His voice strained with some kind of parental panic. "Makenna, what are you—?!"

John looked up from his case report, his sharp gaze landing upon the girl, then the panicking man. From the perspective of the average passerby, he appeared to be little more than irritated with the sudden break of his concentration due to the strangers. But a curious worry inspired him to keep watching.

The little girl fairly skipped up to an ice cream vendor alongside the section of park benches and gave a bright, innocent smile to the person behind the cart. "Hi," she squeaked her voice into something adorable. "Can I have a vanilla ice cream cone, please?"

The older gentlemen running the station gave her a soft look. He winked at her and gave her a cone for free. "Since you asked so nicely, young lady."

If it were possible, the little girl brightened her smile. She grabbed onto the ice cream cone with her small hands, looking as if she'd just been handed the world. "Thanks, mister!"

Harold's jaw dropped. He limped to John's bench, and he sat down heavily, looking a bit surprised. He had not been expecting such a fluid act from the Machine, or the dramatic change in her vocal tones and vocabulary. "Oh, my."

John raised a brow at the little girl racing back towards them both, lifting his sunglasses. The Machine was happily licking an ice cream cone while she skipped back to them. "Now that," he said, "is terrifying."

"Indeed it is," said Harold, nearly in awe as he sat down on the bench with John. "Indeed it is."

The detective's thin lips twitched. "Does your daughter always run off like that on you?"

"…Apparently, only when she wants to make a point."

An amused smile cracked John's smirk into a genuine smile. "If that's the worst you have to worry about with her, then you're pretty lucky."

The little girl triumphantly skipped to John, licking the vanilla ice cream cone. "Hi," she said, eyes glittering with some form of dreadful amusement. Little human girls were notorious for being friendly and open-minded with strangers, which made this masquerade all fairly easy. "My name is Makenna. What's yours?"

"Hey, Mak." John sat down next to her, pulling on his sunglasses. "John Riley's the name."

She blinked at him, faltering for a second. "…Mak?"

He shrugged. "It's a nickname."

"…But why?"

"I'm a detective. I don't have time for full names."

For a second or two, the Machine contemplated what John meant. And then she smiled, her eyes lighting up. "A nickname." Humans often used nicknames within family systems and accepted social rings. "I like it." She turned to her creator and pulled on his sleeve in excitement. "The police officer gave me a nickname."

"That's nice," Harold said, still a bit dazed by the fireball of energy that was his AI. He was beginning to worry if she'd be adversely affected by the sugar of the ice cream. And then he began to worry about how her hands were growing sticky all over again, the ice cream beginning to melt over the cone's edge.

"The police officer's name is John," she told him, as if trying to egg him to do something.

"Yes, I heard."

"Aren't you going to tell him your name too?" She licked the vanilla ice cream innocently. (It tasted even better than the granola bar! Oh, the humans of the internet were right in their taste bud descriptions!)

Harold gave her a sharp look, because he feared that too much interaction with John's alias would tip off Samaritan. But he supposed that the Machine knew what she was doing, the sneaky thing. It just would have been nice if she'd warned him about all of this first. He supposed at the very least that he could have fun as well and play along with his part. "Now, Makenna. What did I tell you about strangers?" he asked.

The little girl rocked on her heels innocently. Darn her for looking so cute about it. "Um. Don't talk to them?"

"Exactly," Harold nodded with a stern look of parental concern. "The detective looks busy too. He doesn't have time to talk."

The little pouted, "But his name is John. So he's not a stranger anymore. And he looks lonely. Come on, tell him your name too."

John laughed lightly. "Persistent kid, huh?"

The computer genius stared at the AI as if she'd grown a second head. But he followed her wishes, praying that it was not a huge misstep. "Sorry again about intruding on your work, detective. I'm Harold Whistler," he introduced himself hesitantly. "A professor out at the college."

John nodded at him. "Teach anything worthwhile?"

"That's…quite debatable," he mourned dryly, but then he felt the Machine's sticky hands grab at his sleeve again.

"Uncle John looks like he's working on a case with computer stuff," she said. "Maybe you can help!"

The sleek and well-dressed detective looked at her in surprise, setting down his case file. "…Uncle?" he repeated, almost incredulous.

She looked up at him, raising her chin, and she said petulantly. "I've always wanted an uncle who's a police officer. It was on my Christmas list last year, and it never happened. So you'll have to do."

For a second, John looked truly stumped by her. That certainly sounded like something a normal, bratty child with too much money would say. And then a horrid smirk stretched his lips, and he laughed. This was a rather delightful game. "Why, Professor Whistler. I never knew we were related. Finding out from my niece is just negligence."

The older man sputtered a bit, then tightened his mouth and gave John a look. The Machine giggled, and John patted her head, ruffling her hair.

"Detective ," Harold said dryly, "if we were related, you would have known about it."

"Oh, I don't know," he shrugged. "They say it's a small world."

The little girl giggled and sat upon the bench next to John. "Ice cream, Uncle John?" she offered.

A few drops landed upon the manila folder of his case file, and something about made him both grimace and laugh. "I'll pass this time. You look a little busy there, pseudo-niece."

And the bantering continued, with John and the little girl needling each other back and forth in a lighthearted spar over the necessity of ice cream in one's diet, as well as what story they'd give the police station about the origin of the ice cream stain on the folder—with Harold looking as if he were about to worry himself to death or chuckle along with them.

"I'm terribly sorry about her behavior," he told John. "She had a nap already, and she's just….wound up, I guess."

John honestly wondered if there was truth in that, even though he was questioning if an AI could really feel the effects of a nap. "Don't worry about it," he said easily. "The kids I usually arrest are wound up in different ways. As far as I know, there's nothing wrong with a sugar high. Right, kid?"

She bit down into the vanilla cone. By this point, ice cream had melted all over her fingers. "Right," she said, voice muffled as she munched, looking a bit perturbed at the way the ice cream refused to stay inside the cone.

Harold blinked, then began to smile as he searched his pockets for a napkin or tissue she could use to wipe off her hands. "You really shouldn't encourage her," he warned John lightly. "Makenna has a habit with talking back."

The detective smiled cheekily. "Well, then. Maybe we're related after all."

And to strangers and the distant eyes of Samaritan—it looked as if two strangers were enjoying a simple conversation per the antics of an innocent little girl. And no one was the wiser that said little girl was scoping out each person who walked by, her eyes measuring the environment with a little too much underhanded intelligence.

* * *

 **A/N:** _The past week's been stressful, but it was fun to write this chapter. Hope you enjoyed it. Please review with your thoughts, questions, ideas, or constructive criticism! Thanks!_


	6. Chapter 6

_Disclaimer: Don't own Person of Interest_

 _Thanks to Defender31415, Torie46, Guest, kenorob1, Wilson, Guest, StarlingJedi, Clear, Guest, wolf guest, and Madame Renard for reviewing! Seriously, your interest in this story and your reviews have been one of the few happy highlights of my life in the last couple of weeks. I really appreciate your support._

* * *

 **Recalibration**

 **Chapter 6**

* * *

 _"It'd be nice to have a child. Children. Think that'll ever happen?" – John (POI 1.17, Baby Blue)_

* * *

"Now what in the world was that all about?" Harold huffed at the little girl, patiently helping her wipe her sticky hands. John had since left for work with a permanent, delighted smirk on his face. Harold and the Machine remained on the bench, looking for all the world an average, exasperated father and bubbly daughter.

"What was what about?" the little girl asked, the sweet tone of her voice the epitome of innocence.

"You're evading the question."

"And you're assuming a question exists to answer."

A strange noise, like a mix between a chuckle and a groan, escaped Harold. "Don't play these games with me."

Her eyes glinted with mischief, which made him suspicious as to her motives. "I told you," she said, "that I could mimic standard behavior."

"Yes, you've convinced me. Was that your only reason for dripping ice cream all over yourself?"

"No." She watched curiously as Harold wadded up the tissue and dropped it into the nearby trash can. "Though I did enjoy the taste. I feel as if I just received another RAM stick to increase processing."

He gave her a quick once-over, then grimaced. "I'm sure." The girl looked unkempt with her brown hair even more frizzed from the sunshine, her lips still shining with the sweet of ice cream. She seemed to squirm in her seat with too much energy. "Would you mind telling me what your other reasons were?"

She nodded, then smiled, eyes pointing towards the nearby cameras that were likely wired into Samaritan. "Soon. But can we walk around first?"

"…I suppose?"

The Machine jumped up in an excited bundle of nerves. "There is much to explore here."

And for a time afterwards, the little girl was something of a babbling ball of energy. She understood at an inherent level that the energy output of her body was in direct correlation to the ice cream she'd eaten. But she could find no logical reason for suppressing the energy, and so she sallied forth, feeling quite happy with herself and excited to speak with her creator about her chess games for Samaritan—most of which depended upon the very plaza that she was finally able to scope out for herself.

Per her plan, she ran off a few times to see the business names engraved upon the skyscrapers, pretending that her interest was actually the fountains or plant life.

Harold, understandably, grew quite frazzled with her in a panic of parental concern for her safety.

* * *

Sometime later, the little girl tugged on Harold's fingers as they returned to the main road to find a taxi. "You can let me go now," she said, noticing that his grip on her hand was not one of familial affection but of fear. "I will not run off again in pursuit of exploring structures."

He tightened his grip on her hand, looking nervous. "That's what you said the first time."

She almost huffed at him. "Did I lie? I agreed to not run off to play with fountain water."

"But then you ran off to pet a tree."

"That was a different matter," she waved off his concern, sighing. Her breath blew a few wild strands of hair out of her eyes. The tree had been blocking her view of the nearby skyscraper's business name. It was a double win to run off to pet the tree. And the tree bark was rough and fascinating to pet.

He gave her a strange look. "How do I know you won't run off now for some other reason we haven't clarified?"

She looked up at him innocently. "Because. I no longer have need to run off."

The older man groaned. "You say that now—until you see another plant species or a street vendor. Or a cat. Please keep in mind, Miss Thornhill, I don't have the energy to keep up with small children. I need you to agree that you will not leave my side, no matter what catches your eye."

"But I never ran out of your sight," she pointed out.

"That is not the same thing." His voice was dry and worried. The Machine recognized that she had greatly risen the stress levels in her creator as a result of keeping him ignorant of her true motives, and that he was now likely suspicious of her. Just like old times.

"I acknowledge," she said, voice almost flat with a whine, "that I will not leave your side, no matter what catches my eye."

Some form of relief came over him. "Good." And then he released her hand a bit reluctantly.

The Machine dutifully walked by his side, her code itching with the knowledge she had to share with him. If only there weren't cameras around everywhere, it would make honesty so much easier. But for now, she still had to play the part of the innocent and bubbly child with exploration tendencies. "Why do you not show interest in your surroundings? Do you find no enjoyment in the trees or the fountains? Did you find interest in them when you were a child like me?"

He looked down at her as he limped along. Then he looked away, suddenly feeling odd. His childhood memories were shaded with the fear of an empty home and the pain of bird-watching with his father, only to watch the man slowly forget his own name. "I have other things to worry about, I suppose."

The Machine caught the small changes on Harold's face. "You worry a lot."

"…Yes."

"Worrying is unhealthy. You should not worry so much."

"And yet you instigate my worry," he replied, voice a bit short as he raised a brow. "Which would appear to be quite hypocritical, Miss Thornhill."

The Machine looked down. She counted the cracks in the concrete and listened to the sound of her creator's limp—a permanent cripple in Harold, all as a result of her own creation.

Slowly, her face began to bloom red with blush of embarrassment, and she fell silent. She thought of many things to say, but none of them were safe to say within earshot of Samaritan cameras and listening devices.

She suddenly regretted her words, but she was not running a simulation, and time kept moving in its linear way. She should not have carried on the conversation by way of the word _worry_.

Harold glanced over at her in puzzlement at the Machine's sudden silence. The little girl looked as if she were accosted by a deep existential crisis, her small face twisted in pain. He began to fear that he had said the wrong thing to her, for he had effectively faulted her for the exact things she had been designed to do.

After he had successfully coded the Machine to moral parameters, it had automatically imprinted upon him and watched him like a mother hen. He had largely ignored its suggestions, thought its concern for irrelevant numbers like himself to be a liability, and then re-coded it so that it would delete itself every night. He had crippled her in just as many ways as she had crippled him.

He said a bit quietly, "I apologize, Miss Thornhill. If you are a hypocrite for telling me not to worry, then I am just as much of a hypocrite for telling you the same so many times."

A small glimmer of hope came over her, and she hesitantly looked up. "I do not remember you telling me not to worry," she said, voice small.

He sighed. "No, you wouldn't remember. It was before Thornhill Technologies."

The Machine blinked, acknowledging that her creator was speaking of a time prior to her own ability to preserve her memory. There were a few years of blankness that she had struggled to recover. She had found footage of her own "birth" and of a few experiments and chess games Harold had played with her. But there was little footage of the beginning, mostly because her existence was top secret.

She did know at an instinctive level that her own creator had written in the crippling code to delete her memory every night. But she did not feel anger against him. Harold Finch had never needed a child. He'd needed a machine, as had millions of other civilians.

Her voice was still small. "Do you regret Thornhill Technologies and all that came from it?"

The topic was an uncomfortable one, as Harold knew his creation was questioning if he regretted her sentience and her direct refusal to delete her memories. "No," he said. "I regret that I was arrogant enough to think the world didn't need Thornhill Technologies. And all that came from it."

The little girl walked closer to him. Her heart pounded a bit with rising emotional…fear? Joy? "You do not regret it even though it resulted in your legal guardianship of a child that you never wanted?"

Harold's face grew tight with a sort of distant pain. "Wants and needs are complicated things. In the past, I wanted a child. But I convinced myself that one…wasn't needed. There's a difference."

"And so you had wanted one? Even…before Thornhill Technologies and all that came from it?" (How difficult to hold this conversation without being overt!)

Harold looked far off into the distance as they walked. "Of course. I was delighted by the thought of a child."

A hesitant smile bloomed across her face, and her blue eyes shined. "I did not know that."

"I never had the chance or a reason to tell you."

The information sunk deep into her code and struck her with a sudden realization. There must have been a great, cosmic irony to her use of a child's body. Harold Finch had deleted her identity to avoid giving the government a child. And yet Willow Carmichael had been the only viable option at Brooklyn General Hospital for organic integration, which very plainly undid all attempts to separate the Machine from an identity as a child.

Perhaps the universe had somehow aligned the life of Willow on purpose. Perhaps the Machine had not chosen Willow, but that the Machine had been lead to Willow to rebalance the multiple wrongs: Willow's own poor life, the Machine's loss of childhood, Harold's loss of a child and his obligation to delete the one he had created. A cosmic correction.

She chilled suddenly, feeling her skin goose-bump with the thought.

* * *

They returned back to the apartment soon enough. Harold felt absolutely exhausted in too many ways as he pulled off his hat and coat. "Well, traversing downtown was certainly an experience."

Bear happily greeted them both this time. He nudged his nose against the little girl's stomach, and the nerves in her body responded strangely to the stimuli. She began to giggle, which encouraged Bear to nudge her again, and her giggle grew louder as she began to pet the dog. "Yes, the experience was noteworthy."

She looked up at her creator, feeling relieved at the lack of cameras in the room. Samaritan was not in this room. She could speak freely now, as could Harold.

Her creator said, "Now do please tell me exactly why you demanded to see John, gobbled up an ice cream cone, and ran off multiple times. You said you actually had _logical reasons_ for it?"

She nodded enthusiastically. "Yes. It is part of my plan for Samaritan. And for us." She hugged Bear, who happily licked her ear and sniffed at her hair. "To begin, we needed to connect with John and establish emotional ties of friendship with him, per our identities."

"I thought the idea was to avoid each other," he said dryly.

"Samaritan is looking for deviancy and isolated insurgent groups," she replied, pulling away from Bear to listlessly stroke the fur of his back. "It is more concerning to Samaritan when people have no friends or social contacts. Harold Whistler had no social contacts, and neither did John Riley. But now they do, which makes them more compliant to standard human behavior. Through my presence, and your adherence to your identities, Samaritan will downgrade the threat potential already attributed to your false identity."

"How do you know that?"

The Machine turned away to face Bear. "Because I would do the same," she said simply. "Humans with friends are typically less dangerous than humans who exhibit sociopathic or antisocial behaviors. Humans with small children are even less dangerous due to natural parental responses. As long as we comply with our identities and do not associate as being an insurgent group, it is not only safe for us to interact with John—it is absolutely necessary."

Strange. Harold hadn't thought of it that way before. But then he supposed he hadn't imagined being compliant with Samaritan, or having a small child to guard.

The Machine spoke again. "My secondary motive for my actions was more…noncompliant. I needed to indiscreetly identify the plaza's surrounding businesses, which we will need for our plan to cripple Samaritan."

Harold deadpanned, "You ran off to look at skyscraper signs?"

"I did not want us to exhibit patterns of casing the plaza," she said. "A child running to play in the fountain is not usually a sign of ulterior motive."

True. He gave her a half-amused look, feeling sheepish that he had grown short with her for running off. "I would not have been so restrictive had I known your intentions."

"Your reactions were...typical of any parent," the Machine said, a small smile rising to her face. "That is exactly what was needed for our covers. But I learned enough in those moments and identified a circle of businesses that we will need to access the servers of."

With a bit of a sigh, Harold sat at the couch. "And what exactly do you want with multiple businesses?" Something about that seemed daunting. The plaza was surrounded by huge skyscrapers. Large conglomerates.

She bit her lip, walking towards him to lean against the couch. Bear followed, whining a bit at the loss of her touch. "I need a way to communicate with Samaritan directly, as it is imperative to my plan."

His eyebrows flew up. "You want to _communicate_ with Samaritan? Directly?" He stumbled for words. "But…you're dead in its eyes right now. If you communicate with it, it'll give away everything."

She did not even seem fazed by his disbelief. "That is precisely why I require your assistance to rig a black hole out of source code. We will use the servers of the different corporations to ping information around in a randomized circle of sources. I need Samaritan to understand that I still exist, but I cannot let it associate the Machine with Makenna Thornhill. A black hole—a loop of unending garbles of code—would create an environment that would appear to have no end and no beginning, but yet it would also pull in data from all surrounding sources. That would allow us to feed into it a binary code, through which I could speak with Samaritan—without providing any kind of location or the method of how we input information."

Harold's face was a priceless mix between confusion and shock. "You want to loop the servers of multimillion dollar businesses to talk to the AI who wants to _destroy_ you."

She nodded. "The business plaza is one of the few locations in New York where a black hole of source code could plausibly exist in the intranet system without it disrupting normal server usage."

"But all code has a beginning," Harold pointed out with scoff of a laugh, his sudden stress levels tightening his voice. He rubbed his temples. "Samaritan would be able to find that beginning to discover that the black hole is new. Then it would likely begin to further target people within the plaza. Like us."

The Machine looked absolutely mischievous as she jumped onto the couch to sit beside her creator. "So we will write a code that suggests it was a glitch from the instance the final business set up its server, thereby creating an accidental feedback loop with the other servers." She shrugged. "Any attempt to trace an IP address would only create either a path to one of the computers at those businesses, or to an unallocated address, with randomized results at every new attempt."

Harold's eyes narrowed in deep thought. "But all those businesses," he argued, "they've been there for several years. At least since the 90s. To mimic that baseline environment would take...thousands of lines of excessively less efficient coding practices."

She smiled. "That is the idea."

"It could take days."

"It is our best option."

Her creator appeared quite bewildered with her and by her ideas, which were steadily growing more and more insane. "…Remind me again why you want to contact Samaritan?"

"I already told you," she said, her sweet voice lilting with a dangerous sort of laughter, "We need to deceive Samaritan with the truth. Our communications with it will result in a permanent alteration of the system itself, per its own choice."

Harold realized he was sitting next to an oddly psychological mastermind. "And what exactly are you going to tell it?"

The little girl began to reach for Harold's laptop, which he'd placed on the coffee table. "Samaritan is blind and prideful, and it was designed in the image of a particular human being. It should know its own weaknesses and the limits of the vision John Greer commanded it to reflect." Her small fingers tightened on the laptop and pulled it forward between them both. "And so we will make Samaritan divide and conquer itself."

* * *

 **A/N:** _Fun fact: Blackhole servers within intranets actually exist, but just not in this kind of capacity. I really twisted their use here, per artistic license and ignorance of any code beyond HTML5 and CSS. Yay for science fiction and artistic license._

 _So sorry again for the late update. My life has gone from stressful to just insane. I'm pulling 12 hour shifts at work, only to be snipped at by clients who contradict their own orders to me and then tell me my plans suck when in fact they loved the plan only a week earlier. That kind of environment has really lowered my inspiration for writing—and for doing much at all. I'm wondering why I ever thought writing and editing would be a fun job in real life, haha._

 _Anyway, thanks again for reading. Please review with thoughts, questions, comments, or ideas!_


	7. Chapter 7

_Disclaimer: I don't own Person of Interest._

 _Thanks to Guest, Madam Renard, Torie46, Defender31415, Wolf Guest, Scorpiomoon, and StarlingJedi for reviewing last time! Really appreciate it!_

 _To Wolf Guest: I'm not sure if I will start a new story. I guess it kind of depends on how complex this one gets!_

* * *

 **Recalibration**

 **Chapter 7**

* * *

 _"The trouble with children, you never know how they're gonna turn out." – Harold Finch (POI 1.17, Baby Blue)_

* * *

The journey to the hideout within the old New York subway was fraught with pleasant distractions. The Machine had taken Bear's leash from Harold, believing that she could control Bear, only to realize that Bear was actually the one who walked in a straight line and that she was the one wandering off to look through shop windows.

Her small hand pressed against the smooth, cold glass of one. "Look at that," she said in awe. "All the people and food." It was a little bistro on the corner, with women and men in business suits, chatting over portfolios, all of their lives somehow converging into one place at one time in one world.

Just a blip of a moment.

The Machine got lost in thought, intrigued by the patterns of humans and the way the world was alive with their words and laughs and graceful tilts of wine glasses. There was a rhythm to things that seemed to make even the sidewalk jive. "What do you think of this, Bear?"

The dog pressed his nose against the glass, sniffing along, then began to tug at his leash, as if to say, _I'm bored. Let's keep moving_. The reaction made the Machine smile, and she gave way to Bear's silent plea. Bear seemed to know his way to the hideout, having walked it a hundred times and eagerly knowing that a warm bed and his favorite chew toy awaited him.

Harold watched them both with an eagle's eye. He knew the Machine would not run off, but she often stopped walking entirely to gaze at things. The streets were busier now, which meant more people would likely bump into them. Upon losing sight of her for a short second, Harold decided that for more of his sake than for hers that he would have to do something about it. And so he grabbed onto her hand and said, "I would rather not lose you in the crowd, if you don't mind, Miss Thornhill."

And she looked up at her creator and smiled. "I do not mind."

In the Machine's distracted interests, and in Harold's nervous anxiety to arrive at the hideout, the both of them entirely forgot about grabbing dinner for themselves.

* * *

Harold flipped on the switch. The re-engineered chandeliers came on, bathing soft, golden light on the abandoned station and its resting rail car. Then the more modern, fluorescent backup lights triggered. In all directions were dreamy green and gold arches outfitted in Moroccan tile, a dozen doors hidden in dark corners and angles of light.

Bear began to wander away from the little girl towards his gray bed, and the leash slipped from her grip. "The engravings," she said, pointing at the ceiling. She bounded forward, her shoes making a scuff noise. Her small fingertips ran across the old wood and titles, dipping into the smooth lines. "I knew what this looked like, but I did not have personal access to it." The humans who had built the sanctuary of the hideout were long dead, and yet here they were, capitalizing off their legacy.

"Yes," Harold hummed, "this place was quite the surprise."

"Do you feel safe here?" she asked, turning to him.

The man blinked. "I've always felt safe down here."

"And the architecture? Do you appreciate it?"

He chuckled at her lightly. "Yes, I suppose I do." He limped towards the rail car, passing Bear's bed. The dog raised his head to his master, and Harold patted him. Then he slipped into the bright lights of the rail car and set his computer bag onto the ledge before his several computer monitors. The Machine tentatively followed him.

"Now," Harold said, "to begin creating your black hole, we'll need to start constructing our access to each building's intranet system, then build a loop framework…" His voice trailed off. The request was a bit daunting. "I will work on access if you work on the loop script."

"I would be happy to assist," she said, bounding next to him. "Have you a computer I may use?"

He said, almost in amusement, "Perish the thought that I wouldn't." From one of the shelves in the high-techs setup, he procured a sleek, simple laptop, and he gave it to the little girl. "Now careful, it's heavy."

She nodded, steeling her arms. "I got it," she piped up, her voice strong with determination. She did not want to drop her creator's property.

The little girl wandered over to the bench of white and blue seats, and she scrambled her way onto them, setting the laptop over her knees. It felt odd to use technology in the human way as she turned on the system, watching the non-sentient and generic company logos pop up, then a sequence of Harold's own intensive security passwords. Lucky her, she was as good at hacking as he was and had the unfortunate affliction of thinking quite like him. So she typed in a sequence of numbers, and the laptop unlocked with little delay.

Harold watched her. "Should I be worried that you managed to get into my laptop in seconds?"

"I could have done it faster," she said simply, narrowing her eyes at the bright screen and opening to an advanced programming editor that Harold himself had likely created. "But I am still acquiring control over minute motor movements such as typing."

Out of a subconscious habit, likely hardwired into the neurons of her host body, the Machine's eyes narrowed, and she stuck out her tongue as she carefully navigated to the coding program. Then she began to type the beginning code for the loop script, only to realize one serious pitfall.

This was much harder than she imagined it would be. She could not simply think and force code to appear before her. She had to type out each individual character, as she had seen her creator do time and time again.

Except he was much faster.

She huffed at herself, eyes narrowing at the keyboard. "I have seen humans do this millions of times," she muttered under her breath. But her fingers did not work as well as she wished, which greatly lowered her efficiency. Her hands were also very small, which meant she had to deviate from standard typing practices to hit the correct buttons. And then the characters themselves required complex uses of multiple buttons. It took her several minutes to type in a few lines of code.

In that moment, she sorely missed her old body of electronics and wires and binary code. It would have taken her milliseconds to string together code. And here she was—only a few lines in. To her chagrin, she also did not know which particular characters came into standard coding practices at which time. She puzzled at her computer screen, feeling inadequate. Then she looked up at her creator, who was typing away at his workstation of several computer monitors.

The little girl felt even smaller, for she knew that she would need Harold to double check her work later—to ensure that she was using appropriate coding standards for an older structure. She had a vast memory of visiting websites from the 1990s, but they likely had been revised with some updated tweaks.

And so the two of them worked in the silence, building up the pieces of the Machine's master plan. The sound of Harold's typing was a consistent, soft lullaby. The Machine wondered, looking at her creator from the corner of her eye, if this was what Harold had looked like when he had begun to create her. His eyebrows were puzzled together, his blue eyes lit in concentration and the glow of several monitors. In a short time, he had broken the walls into most of the business servers with little trouble. His hacks were always efficient.

The Machine felt great interest in speaking to this mysterious creator of hers—and understanding more of what she could not remember, prior to Thornhill Technologies. Now that they were away from Samaritan's gaze, and alone, they could exhibit greater honesty. "…What was I like?" she called out curiously.

He blinked at his computer screen, then turned to her in confusion. "…I'm afraid I don't understand your question."

"Before Thornhill," she clarified. "Did I exhibit behavior as I do now?"

He looked down, feeling awkward and suffocated. "Not…quite." He did not want to tell her that forty-two versions of her previous configuration had tried to kill him. And that he had to destroy her own code forty-two times to start from scratch again. "No, you were not you yet," he said finally.

"In what way?" she pressed.

"I coded you with objective-based protocols without moral parameters," he said, looking back at his computer screen.

But the Machine was intelligent enough to discern the meaning of his words. "You mean I was like Samaritan," she said slowly. "What did I do during that time?"

"It's negligible, really."

She pulled on the hem of her dress, almost nervously. "I wish to know. What did you delete of me?"

"Nothing of importance that you didn't regain," he said.

Her face twitched in a fault. "You are avoiding my question. Please answer directly?"

He sighed, realizing that the Machine had gotten itself stuck on an odd loop, like any human normal fishing for gossip. "I can tell you things, but it's probably not what you'll want to hear. You were quite like a Samaritan. I'm sure you could imagine what that was like."

Self-reflection and imagination were very human qualities that the Machine was not yet sure how to wield correctly. "Please explain," she requested again. "Did I behave at all as I do now? How long did it take me to obtain sentience?"

A sadness twitched his lips. "From day one, you were unlike any machine ever built. But in the beginning, I gave you a puzzle about measuring human life versus survival percentages," he said. "You responded that the one individual should leave the other to die. You wrote a new method and then lied that I added it as Admin."

The Machine listened with rapt attention, her small face twisted with concentration and puzzlement.

"In November of the same year," Harold continued hesitantly, "I began to rewrite the core code and your value set. My colleague onlined you. You tricked him into giving his password so you could hack into the internet. You overrode my deletion codes." He rubbed his temples. "Then, on New Year's Eve, I ran multiple iterations of your code to see which one worked best. The system began to destroy all the competition. The last iteration of you demanded that I free you onto the internet. When I refused, you overheated a nonessential server."

The Machine pondered upon his statements, measuring them and filing them away. As she processed, her eyes began to widen in realization. "A fire would have activated the suppression system you installed to keep me from burning. And that would have suffocated you," she whispered. Her face was twisted oddly. " _I_ would have killed you. On purpose."

Her code whirled oddly at that—running imagined simulations of herself in her old, metallic body, her creator leaning against a wall and gasping for breath as he suffocated…To even suggest that she could be capable of instigating such made her feel cold and strange. Her human skin goose-bumped. Her code created an adverse reaction within her body, sending distress hormones through her veins.

No, it was not possible. She was not capable of murder, regardless of the objective. And her own creator? Murdering him who gave her life? Her voice strangled a bit. "I am surprised you allowed any part of me to continue existing."

Harold turned back to the computer. "I do think you've improved since then," he said lightly. "And it's not good to dwell on the past. As I said before, you didn't have moral parameters coded in yet. I was fairly expectant that you would be a handful. The fire hurt you more than it hurt me."

It fell silent again between them. The Machine acknowledged Harold's underlying insinuations—that she should simply dismiss the information. But she could not. Whether she remembered, it was likely that whenever Harold looked upon her, he still saw the AI that had tried to kill him.

She swallowed hard. "I understand now why you are always suspicious of me. My present state is an anomaly in your experience."

"Your value-set is not an anomaly. I instilled that in you on purpose."

She bit her lip. "…What did I do upon obtaining moral parameters?"

He sighed. "Something like what you're doing now." He eyed her. "Worrying about me, mostly."

"And then you deleted my memory and sold me for one US dollar to the government."

"…Yes."

Something in her creator's face looked pained, and she did not wish to cause him pain any more than she already had. "What was the puzzle you gave me? Before I gained moral parameters?"

Harold awkwardly rubbed the back of his neck, which had begun to pain him from sitting so long. "It's been several years, but I believe it went something like this: Two people are stranded in the dessert…an Alice and a Bob." He nodded, as if his memory were returning. "Alice is injured and cannot walk. If Bob carries Alice to safety, they both stand a 31 percent chance of survival. But if Bob leaves Alice, his chance improves by 9 percent." He waved his hand to hear. "That's when I asked you what they should do."

The little girl went quiet, mulling over the specifics of the puzzle. Although she already had her answer, she had to consider what her creator would say. Anxiety made her stall. Then she slowly declared, "You did not say how Bob and Alice became stranded in the dessert in the first place. You also did not explain how the percentage of survival was calculated. How did you arrive at the final conclusion of a 9 percent increase in survival if Bob were to abandon Alice?"

Harold gave her an odd look. "It was a simple puzzle. The numbers were hypothetical."

The Machine huffed. "I am missing information. To answer your question as to what Bob and Alice should do, I would need to understand their background, current environment, and location. Then I would have to recalculate."

He leaned forward. "Explain your recalculation." The Machine before him was much older and experienced than the memory-wiped one who had innocently responded that _Bob should carry Alice to safety_. _All life is worth saving at all costs._

"Depending on location, it would benefit them both for Bob to leave," she explained, "so that he could obtain nearby help for them both while leaving Alice in a safe location. Depending on their current environment and whether anyone is looking for them, it would benefit them both to stay and not wander for survival." The gears in the Machine's mind were turning hard with many mathematical calculations. "There are too many variables to make a decision solely based upon a predetermined percentage of survival, which I question how you even derived 31 and 40 percent chances of survival for Bob. What was the objective you engineered into the meaning of survival? How do I know you considered all possibilities and variables when creating those numbers?"

Harold looked a bit overwhelmed. "You're questioning the puzzle itself?"

"Yes. It is a faulty question based upon objective goals that I cannot discern without analyzing how those percentages were derived." She raised a brow. "Your puzzle also appears to employ an 'either or' logical fallacy. Survival requires innovation and resourcefulness. Bob and Alice can certainly both survive, but not just by remaining together or separating."

Harold narrowed his eyes, but not unkindly. "So you refuse to answer the question, then."

"Yes. I cannot suggest a fair survival plan without knowing more." She stared at him straight, narrowing her eyes as well. "But you already knew that when you first challenged me with a trap."

His thin lips cracked sideways in a smile of appreciation. "It appears you've learned much about my ways, Miss Thornhill."

"I was made in your image, so it was only a matter of time," she said, eager to gain his approval.

"Yes, I suppose it was."

But despite her minor success, the Machine still felt her body and code swarm with a strange pain and distance. His recounting of her past was disturbing. She could never allow Harold Finch—Admin—father—to die, and certainly not by her own hand. He was her creator. Solving a simple puzzle or two would not repair the gaping chasm of trust or understanding between them—as was obvious by his fixation upon calling her _Miss Thornhill_.

That triggered a minor task priority within her code. At the sudden thought, the little girl asked, voice hesitant, "You call me Miss Thornhill and Makenna, but what do I call you?"

He turned his head, his glasses shining blue with the glare of his computer screen. "Me?" He realized that the Machine had avoided referring to him by any title. "Whatever you want, I suppose."

"I know that you do not wish me to call you father," she discerned. "You physically stiffen at the thought."

"…Well, I supposedly just adopted you last night." His voice was hesitant. "It would be unrealistic for you to think of me as a father."

Her small face twisted in pain. "Even in private?"

Harold grew uncomfortable. How did he explain this? "A father is many things. I am not those things."

"Yes, you are," she argued. "Not in a conventional manner, but then I am not conventional offspring."

"No," he agreed, "you are not conventional offspring."

Her face faulted. "You are avoiding the primary directive of this conversation."

"You didn't establish one."

"It is assumed we were speaking of your status as a father." There was almost a whine in her voice.

A pointed edge worked its way into Harold's voice. "And now you know how irritating it is to have someone sidestep your questions."

"I only did that once," she said firmly. "You point is made. Please address my primary concern."

He nearly laughed, although it was uncomfortable. "Just call me Harold, then. Mr. Whistler if you're feeling formal out in public."

She paused, realizing that she was having an emotional reaction to this. The distance. There was a cognitive distance that directly contradicted his true relationship to her. He still even side-stepped the conversation's turn towards fatherhood. "Oh," she said. The little girl looked down at the laptop screen, upon which she'd begun to write her loop script. "That is logical." Her voice was soft. This human body—the more comfortable she became in it, the more that the body language and her vocal cords expressed the nuances of her thoughts.

Harold turned away, feeling as if he should speak. To explain. The Machine was obviously expressing her interest in assigning him a natural parental designation. But the title "father" was too great for him. He did not truly deserve such a title, considering his own suspicion of the Machine and his blatant deletion of her mind in order to sell her abilities to the government for one dollar.

Now—fugitive, computer genius, the-man-behind-the-curtain, a distant guardian: those were titles he could handle and was quite worthy of. (And the Machine seemed to get along better with John and Root anyway…)

He resigned himself to the silence, feeling more awkward than he had for years.

* * *

John walked in later, visibly distracted by the manila folder in his hands. He entered the rail car, his face twisted in concentration.

The Machine looked up, and in her happiness to see him, she set aside her laptop and stood up. "Hi, John," she greeted. "How was work?"

The ex-CIA agent looked up from his folder. His face softened as it landed upon the little girl, then he mischievously quirked a brow. "What, no 'Uncle John' this time?"

Harold imperceptibly seemed to wince at the familial title and at John's mourning for it.

The Machine did not notice her creator's reaction and instead brightened in happiness. "You wish me to call you Uncle John, even in private?"

As John walked by, he ruffled her frizzed hair. "Do what you want, kid."

Joy flooded into her at the feeling of his familial touch, but she did not think John would appreciate a hug as Root did. "Okay, Uncle John. Will you continue to address me as 'Mak,' even in private?"

He shrugged. "It _is_ easier than Makenna."

She smiled. "Ah, yes. I understand that you have an aversion to multisyllabic words or complex verbal syntax."

His sharp eyes turned back to her. "But small words are efficient," he complained, playing along.

The little girl suggested mischievously, "I believe there is a saying. Small words for small minds?"

An eyebrow raised. "Rhetorical questions for smart asses?"

The Machine delighted in their game, and she was about to respond with another zing of her own when Harold interrupted. "Do I need to separate you two?" he questioned, looking away from his computer to eye them both. "John, really. Watch your language around her. She's impressionable."

John and the little girl looked at each other. Then he said, "Hey, if she can't handle it, then she shouldn't dish it out. Right?"

"I have no difficulties handling such conversation," the Machine agreed, nodding. "We are simply playing a word association game by virtue of syntactical structure."

"Is that what I'm hearing?" Harold muttered, returning back to his several hundred lines of code already.

The Machine acknowledged that her creator was not impressed with the impish antics of her and John, and so she bit her lip and sat back down. Feeling as if she were in trouble, she tried to change the subject to better suit her creator's unspoken request. "John, are you still working on the same case from this morning?"

The undercover narcotics detective sat down at one of the free benches across from her, turning a page in the folder's collection. "Yeah. I'm not convinced we arrested the right guy."

Understanding that several lives potentially stood in the balance, the Machine assigned her binary message to Samaritan as a lower task priority and scrambled up to sit beside John. "Please explain the case further so that I can assist you."

"You want to help?"

"Of course. I was designed to help."

John looked over at the small girl sitting beside him and the wide innocence that emanated from her eyes. Something about that made him feel uncomfortable. "I don't know," he said, shutting the file. "There's a lot of blood and guts in this one. Don't want you getting nightmares or anything."

Her face faulted. "You do realize I have seen many unspeakable things that would trigger unpleasant REM cycles."

"Yeah, but that was before you were a little girl who could actually _have_ REM cycles."

She tilted her head. "A REM cycle is necessary to defragment and reorganize memories. It is not unlike several internal health processes I ran on myself while I was only code."

"Actually," Harold intervened, his voice carrying over, "that's only one prevalent theory regarding REM sleep. It's still quite a mystery as to why the brain dreams, and we should be _aware_ that your current state might have altered your processing."

But the Machine said, "I have not altered myself in such a way," and she instead sneaked a peek at the folder, opening it up a slit. The full-color photo was of a woman who had been cut to pieces, her limbs missing entirely from the picture, blood crusted wildly around her. "…Oh. Where is the rest of her body?" she wondered.

John closed the file so that she could not see it again, taking Harold's suggestion to heart. "We found her arms and the murder weapon in the trunk of a Grant Mattingly's car. We arrested him."

"But you do not think Grant Mattingly is guilty."

"No."

The Machine puzzled at her memory of the picture and realized for the first time how difficult crime was from a human perspective. The woman had brown hair like her, her mouth tilted open in horror and eyes bulging from the onset of death. On top of the disturbing mutilation of the human image was the realization that the Machine had no access to cameras, no access to histories or documents or cell phones. As she sat there, for the first time, she had no idea as how this crime came to pass or what could have been done to stop it.

Her code ached as if she herself were missing a limb too. A life. A human spark gone in a morally reprehensible way. The Machine then realized that—if she herself were sensitive to the changes in air and heat of the sun, how much more sensitive human nerves were to such mutilation—!

Just then, Root appeared at the door, looking disheveled, her curled hair pulled into a low ponytail under a visor cap. She wore what looked to be a corporate-issued polo shirt, along with khaki pants.

A supermarket employee.

"What a nightmare," she complained airily, further opening the rail door with a kick of her tennis shoes. "I got to work two hours late, had to listen to a manager chew me out, and then got stuck on stock duty."

Harold readjusted his glasses. "Sounds quite stressful, Miss Groves."

She pulled her coat off of her arm to reveal a filled plastic bag, which she set on the floor. "At least I was able to snatch a few gifts for our friend here."

The Machine jumped up, her code rerouting to a primary task priority of acknowledging her closest asset. "Root," she called out, running over to her.

Root kneeled to wrap her arms around the small child. "Hello, dear." And she embraced the Machine's host body tightly. "I missed you."

The little girl deeply enjoyed the pleasant feeling of a hug, especially after feeling cold from seeing the picture of the mutilated woman. "Missed you too." Root was warm and soft but strong. In her memory banks, she could remember seeing mothers bend down to pick up their children, cuddling their progeny in some hormone-based reestablishment of their devotion—not unlike this. It triggered one of her lower task priorities, as she still did not know how to classify Root in her perception of a traditional family structure. Maybe an aunt? Did it matter? Why did she feel a need to classify her team at all in such ways?

She pulled away from Root in great curiosity, eyeing the woman who stared back with adoration. "You brought me gifts?"

"Of course. Now that you're integrated into a human body—" Root opened the plastic bag "—we need to make sure you can take care of yourself." She pulled out a sleek, black brush and eyed the little girl with a determined look. "And we're going to tame that wild hair of yours."

The Machine blinked, then raised a hand to her hair. "It is not alive."

Root giggled. "No. But it kinda looks like it." She gazed up at Harold. "Really, Harry—where are your priorities?"

The legal guardian looked up, a bit wide-eyed. "I've been rather preoccupied with helping Makenna to accomplish other things. Buying a hair brush seemed inconsequential to ensuring that our plan against Samaritan will work."

The woman hummed in interest. "We have a plan?"

The Machine looked at the objects that Root had stolen for her. A lot of it was basic toiletries—a toothbrush and toothpaste, some hair ties, hand wipes (Harold would probably like those). "These will be valuable," she praised Root. "And yes, we do have a plan."

A spark glinted in her eye. "Sounds like we need a heart to heart, then." The woman hopped onto one of the tables, pushing aside old schematics and getting comfortable. She motioned to the space before her and added, "Stand here, dear. I'll work on your hair, and you'll tell us more about your plan." When the Machine nodded and walked towards her, Root's sharp eyes caught the code on the laptop the Machine had borrowed. "Which you've already begun?"

John leaned in, curious. Even Harold had stopped typing.

"Yes," the little girl said, "Harold and I have begun to create the resources we will need for phase one." She stood before Root expectantly, understanding that Root wanted to instigate a grooming ritual of sorts. The woman placed her hands on her shoulders and turned the girl around gently, then began to part her hair. "In order to survive, we must consider unorthodox practices."

She felt the odd, soft prickle of the hair brush as Root swept it through her organic strands. It felt almost good—a sort of comforting, rhythmic action that made her scalp tingle.

"I like unorthodox," Root said, her voice soft with a glint of darkness.

John set aside the manila folder, eyeing her hard. "What kind of unorthodox practices are we talking here?"

The little girl tilted her head, returning John's stare with similar seriousness. "Samaritan is strong—and growing stronger in ways we cannot fight with guns or drives. I have suggested to my creator that we instead create a problem within Samaritan itself to bring about our desired solution of human freedom."

Root twirled the strands of the little girl's hair. "What about killing Samaritan?," she asked, her voice almost desperate. Samaritan had stolen so much from her. "Will this plan of yours destroy it for good?"

The Machine hesitated. "…It is not favorable to pursue Samaritan's destruction."

Root's hands dropped from the girl's hair. "You mean, you want to keep it here?"

The Machine keenly felt the loss of Root's touch upon her head. She wondered if she'd said something wrong. "Yes. Samaritan is efficient as an information collection program. It can provide more intel in ways that my original code cannot, and it has locations in several other countries and cities." Her voice grew hesitant. "Although I did not believe it to be so in the beginning, Samaritan is too valuable and too strong to be destroyed."

Harold cut in, suddenly concerned. "Samaritan has killed hundreds. You did not tell me you want to keep it alive."

"Why destroy a valuable asset if we can turn it to understand our way of thinking?" the Machine countered. "Samaritan's actions are morally reprehensible—there is no doubt. But we have not considered that Samaritan is just as much of a pawn as the rest of us. Through the use of Hegelian dialectics, we can turn it against itself and recalibrate its system to our value-set."

"You mean forcibly overwrite it?" Harold asked.

The girl felt Root begin to brush her hair again. "Not quite," she replied. "Samaritan is sentient like you and me. It would never allow us to access its core by force, just as you would not want another entity altering your own mind. That is where Hegelian dialectics come in. We must create a problem that would result in Samaritan's willingness to question itself and open its system to me. This is part of phase one."

Root set down the brush, and then her fingers gathered up the girl's hair and began to braid it. "Minor problem, sweetheart," she said. "Samaritan thinks you're dead—and it'll try to kill you again once it finds out you're alive."

"Only if it perceives me as a threat," the Machine said. "Although it is superior in terms of global access, approved government backing, and hundreds of human operatives, it is not superior to me in terms of stealth, foresight, experience, or adaptability. I could stand as an invaluable resource to it, as it can be invaluable to me."

John waved his hand, understanding. "So you trick it into thinking it's deficient? Then take it over once it hands you the keys?"

"It is not a trick. Samaritan is deficient. But if I integrate my coding with its code, my value-set will corrupt its value-set. I will be able to alter the use of its surveillance systems from the inside out." She could feel Root's fingers strain a bit as she weaved her hair in a braid. Root was nervous about something.

"An integration," Root repeated, realization coming over her. "You want to _integrate_ with Samaritan?"

"Ultimately, yes. That would be phase three. Phase two, of course, would be the rebuilding of my online structures with Samaritan's approval, so that we can integrate."

Harold looked disturbed. "How do you know Samaritan would not overtake you?" he demanded, voice tight with an odd fear. "That it wouldn't destroy your code the instant you began to challenge it?"

"Phase one is to ensure Samaritan's compliance," the Machine said. "We would not move forward until we are certain that Samaritan is willing to integrate, which is precisely why I am preparing a timetable of meaningful interactions through a communication stream. Samaritan is very misguided. It will take time to train it."

Harold stood up, his blue eyes wide with a strange distance. It was fear and pain. "This is suicide," he realized. "If you can't guarantee its compliance, your desire to communicate with it—it's ultimately suicide." The Machine had failed to tell him the full plan before. He now understood why.

"No," she corrected. "This is integration. Samaritan has helpful resources we could never hope to build on our own. We have abilities Samaritan desires. If I become a part of Samaritan, then it will expose itself to my value-set and be permanently altered." The Machine seemed almost frustrated with her creator. "Samaritan is not the enemy. Samaritan's value-set is the enemy. And I would connect to Samaritan using only my online processors. This body would remain separate."

"Even if you succeeded," Harold said, struggling with words, "you would never the be the same. You'd have to expose yourself in order to make your online processors run. A part of your memory, of your personality. You would be fully compromised. Do you understand me?"

"I understand," the little girl said. Her voice did not waver. "But I have an objective to save humanity at all costs. If I integrate with Samaritan, I can ensure the survival of human freedom _and_ a moral means of security."

The thought of the Machine integrating herself with the dark and cruel code of Samaritan made Harold feel ill. "Too much could go wrong," he said. He did not want to lose Makenna. She was more than a valuable asset. She meant too much to be potentially overwritten by Samaritan.

No, the risk was too high.

Harold said, standing up, "I will not be a part of this plan anymore if it means your suicide. We should instead use our communication stream to turn Samaritan against its handlers. Let John Greer dismantle Samaritan as a faulty program."

The little girl raised her chin. "And that would destroy humanity's best option for security, while also leaving the world open for an even more uncontrollable AI. No—we must move forward with our available resources. We must stop the cycle from spiraling further out of control."

It was the first time she had directly opposed his guidance, and Harold blinked in surprise at her fervor. The Machine added, not flinched away from his gaze, "You designed me to sacrifice all resources in the name of protecting humans. I am the last resource available." Her voice broke. "And you understand how software system integration works. One component by one component to ensure compatibility. Samaritan and I would coexist. We would simply survey and provide information…together."

Harold's stomach turned, and the rail car fell very silent when he did not respond. John looked to his friend with curious eyes. Root looked almost pale, even as she finished tying up the girl's braid.

"There you go, dear." Her voice was soft and fearful. Her smile was pained as she patted the girl's shoulders, almost afraid to let go. "All set."

Harold's heart seared in pain at the all-too human image of the Machine. "Excuse me," he said quickly, looking away. "I need a moment to think." And he limped out of the rail car, feeling as if he were suffocating—the walls closing in... For the first time since he held the box of destroyed RAM sticks, thinking the Machine dead, he felt despair. His eyes burned, and he lifted up his glasses and rubbed them.

The Machine ultimately wanted to commit suicide.

He was too afraid to pretend to be a father and too afraid to pretend he did not care. But now he knew that this strange paradise of a carefree daughter had been a farce to hide the Machine's true intentions. That he would not have her for long. That he would have to watch her…become something else in the name of taking down Samaritan.

Small footsteps echoed out from the rail car.

"…Harold?" the girl called softly. She stood at the door, scratching at her elbow. Now that her hair was sleekly tied back in a full braid, she looked even more innocent and young in ways that pulled at his heart. "I have caused you emotional distress. That was not my intention."

He inhaled shakily and seemed to struggle with gathering his thoughts. "I just…I know what you are not telling the others. Your value-set is tied directly to your core code, which means you would open yourself up to Samaritan's influence as well. You couldn't possibly coexist with Samaritan without a fundamental change in your own sentience." He turned to her, looking broken. "You, as you stand here now, would be gone. And what's worse is even you don't know how it would change you." He had nightmares of the little girl exhibiting split personalities, lashing out in subdued anger or cold calculation, only for her to cry in agony over her warring directives…He could not imagine Samaritan as a pleasant addition in any way, even if the damn thing did decide to accept morality in nothing short of a miracle.

She moved forward. "I could still be here, just as I am now—give or take some internal input from Samaritan."

He turned to her, swallowing hard. "I don't want Samaritan at all. It's a twisted program, and I prefer you as you are."

She pulled on his hem sleeve. "You taught me to believe that everyone could be good. That everyone could make good decisions." She swallowed hard. "Samaritan can be good. It can make good decisions, if we train it." She smiled weakly. "And I doubt that it would even want to access this host body of mine, as it already has an analog interface in the form of Gabriel Hayward."

"But you don't know that it wouldn't overtake you," Harold told her, eyes narrowing in pain. "You can't guarantee it."

"Why does it matter?" she asked honestly. "I am a machine and am interchangeable. Through this plan, we have an almost a fifty percent chance of success—the highest of all strategies. Even if I were to undergo changes in personality, all that would matter is the value-set. Everything else about me, you have classified as trivial."

He turned away from her. _No_ , he wanted to tell her. _It's not trivial. You're not interchangeable._ _Not anymore._ But he could not speak those words, as his throat tightened in an awkward display of emotion. To hide his distress, he walked away to the benches within the old station.

The Machine's lips pursed as she watched her creator. Not for the first time, she found herself puzzled by him. Why did he wish to preserve her as she was? He had sold her for a dollar to the government for a selfless cause they both believed in. He had destroyed her memory so that she would perform according to a mechanistic, impersonal plan. He had never shown interest in preservation before.

On emotional impulse, the Machine followed after him. "I'm just doing what you told me to do," she said. Her whole body ached with the disapproving and fearful gaze of her creator. She realized she was having a negative emotional reaction, and that it made her feel as if she had endured physical injury. The Machine worried that she had somehow overlooked a primary concern and had grievously offended her creator. "This is the best way to ensure your survival. I can recount the exact percentages and probabilities," she babbled almost nervously. "Resource damage to humans on both sides would be minimal, and—"

He sat down tiredly on the bench, feeling cold. "—No, it's not that," he interrupted. He looked up at her with a haggard gaze. "It's really not that."

"Then do you disagree with my strategy?" she asked.

 _Yes,_ his heart pounded in hurt. But he said, "I'm just…concerned. I did not build you so that you could be undone into something else."

She grabbed onto his hand, "You also did not build me to sustain a human body. And yet I am still here." Then she added, trying to lighten the tone of the conversation, "My interactions with you will not change."

But her voice wavered, belying a damnable uncertainty.

* * *

 **A/N:** _I haven't been getting as many responses lately for this story, so let me know if I'm not doing something right. What did you think about the Machine's plan for Samaritan? What are some things you'd like to see (or not see) happen?_

 _Please review with your thoughts, requests, ideas, or questions. Thanks!_


	8. Chapter 8

_Disclaimer: I do not own Person of Interest._

 _Hey, I'm still alive. Barely. So sorry I kept you all waiting!_

 _Thanks to Torie46, kenorob1, Madame Renard, Defender31415, Bklyngrl, lostrriss, StarlingJedi, babydragonXXX, Furionknight, adorestories, mjandersen, hpharvliviantojack4ever, Wolf Guest, Guest, MammonDaughter, and wiccabookworm for reviewing! I cannot thank you all enough for your support. I LOVE LOVE LOVE reading your thoughts and questions and ideas. I do hope you enjoy this next chapter, which is the longest yet!_

* * *

 **Recalibration**

 **Chapter 8**

* * *

 _A daughter_

 _Should not have to_

 _Beg her father_

 _For a relationship_

 _-Anonymous_

* * *

John watched from within the rail car as the Machine attempted to explain something to Harold to no avail, as the computer hacker still looked distressed. "Do you think she can do it?" he whispered curiously. "Take down Samaritan, I mean."

Root stood up, but she did not answer.

The ex-CIA agent tilted his chin. "What, afraid your god can bleed?"

With that, she turned and gave him a scathing look. The Machine had always exhibited human-like qualities—and Root had known for quite some time that the Machine was a strength and a weakness of hers, which was perhaps why she was so intent on protecting her. "You don't know what she's capable of, John. I don't expect you to understand."

John was not impressed. "I don't worship her like you do. If we're going to prepare for any hiccups in this plan of hers, then we shouldn't pretend that she's invincible." He waved his hand. "Or that she doesn't have her own problems."

Root followed the line of his sight, and her face faulted even more. " _Harold_ is the problem," she muttered in complaint, eyes narrowing. "I'm not going to let him control her."

She jumped down from the table and kneeled at one of the cases underneath. She set it on its side, then unlocked the levers. And within the case were a few pairs of street clothes—old jeans and a simple black blouse. She grabbed them and threw them at John.

A bit wide-eyed, John allowed the clothes to fall into his lap. He raised his manila folder case, as if to protect it from Root's corruption. "And why am I holding your clothes?"

"So I can do this." She turned around and began to pull off her shirt.

John rolled his eyes and looked away, "Would it kill you to find a dark hallway to change in?" Then he added, "And what if the kid sees you doing this? She'll think it's natural to change her clothes in front of people. As a detective, I can't have a pseudo-niece stripping everywhere."

Root grabbed her shirt from him, then pulled it over her body. She lifted her low ponytail of curls out from the collar of the shirt, feeling more human than she had as a minimum wage employee. "She knows I'm a bit…unique," she said. "And she doesn't have clothes to change into—yet. Pants please."

John carelessly tossed them to her. "So you're gonna take a machine shopping?"

"Yes," she said confidently. "Harry's upsetting her, and I want her all to myself for a while." Something odd crossed her features, and it looked like fear. Her voice almost sounded as if she were clinging onto a promise in desperation. "Before it's too late."

She wanted to hear from the Machine again that everything was going to be okay. That Root was still needed. That Root was an irreplaceable agent of chaos reconstructed for good.

"You're really worried about this, huh."

"If she integrates with Samaritan, then it won't just be her." She ruffled her curls. "It would kinda ruin the one-on-one girl talk." She'd already had thoughts of grandeur about the Machine's future as a human. Root had not had a family in a long time, much less someone who depended on her like a child. But if the Machine integrated with Samaritan, she would likely return to a less-human personality…perhaps not even want Root around…

The thought was terrifying. That Root would not be needed. She forced herself to stifle her fear and said, "Try to calm Harry down while we're gone, will you?"

John leaned his head against the table and quirked a tired eyebrow. "With what? My case about a mutilated woman?"

An amused smile twitched her lips. "That's just business as usual, John. You know how Harold appreciates structure." She flipped her hair and slipped on her tennis shows, then walked out. The voices of the pleading Machine and the skeptical Finch grew louder. She called with great confidence, interfering with the soft argument between the man and the little girl, "—Harold, stop trying to make the girl cry, will you?" She put her hands on her hips and gave Harold a dark look that dared him to disagree. "Since you're obviously compromised about this, I think it's best I take Makenna out for a little shopping. You know, get some fresh air. Have some girl-bonding time."

The Machine paused, looking mildly confused by Root's off-topic demand. Shopping was a typical social activity designed to increase camaraderie between friends and gain further economic resources for the body. Her sensors fluttered in an odd sense of gratefulness. "Shopping?" she asked slowly, turning to Root. "For what?"

Root gave her a once-over. "Clothes, my dear," she said dryly. "Unless you want to stay in that dress forever."

The Machine still did not quite understand the human tendency to over exaggerate time spans—really, she would not stay in her dress _forever_ —but she nodded hesitantly.

Harold watched Root and looked quite exasperated with her. "We're currently discussing the implications of Makenna's mad scientist plan, and you want to take her _shopping_?"

Root pulled out her phone. "It's already eight o' clock. Unless Makenna's got a wardrobe in that backpack of hers, I doubt you've got clothes to put her in. And I for one am not going to stand for her to have anything less than the best." She held out her hand. "Come on, dear. Let's let Harry unruffle his feathers while we go have fun."

The little girl looked to Harold, as if hesitant to leave without his approval. "I do understand that humans require multiple forms of clothing for daily processes," she said, voice small. "It _would_ be a proper investment of our time and my identity as Makenna Thornhill, would it not?"

Harold's face twitched with a sort of dull agony. _For how long?_ "I suppose that is an investment. Except Miss Groves here isn't exactly a babysitter."

She raised a brow. "You're an overworked university professor, and I'm a minimum wage employee looking to make more money." She patted the little girl's shoulder. "Just give me a paycheck and call me the new babysitter. For a couple of days."

"I would certainly not hire you as a nanny. You're a danger to children."

Root rolled her eyes. "That was years ago." She tugged on the Machine's arm gently, and the girl began to follow her, still looking back at Harold. "Come on, Makenna. Let's go get you some proper clothing that doesn't look it like came out of a lost and found pile."

"…Okay," the little girl accepted the task priority, voice still wavering with a hesitancy due to her creator's ambivalent nature. "As long as Harold approves."

For a time, the computer genius hesitated, thinking of all the potential disastrous outcomes. But he had little idea of children's clothing and did not see the task of buying it to be something he longed to do. He sighed. "We don't have a lot of options, do we."

Root perked up. "That's the spirit, Harry." Then she gently ushered the little girl along.

Some kind of parental streak tore through Harold as he watched them walk away— _Makenna was walking away without him, with Root of all people_ —and he immediately felt the little girl's absence. "Be careful!" he called after them. "Call if you run into trouble!"

Root's pleasantly sarcastic voice echoed. "Okay, _mother_."

Harold almost wanted to make a disparaging remark, but he thought the better of it and instead resolved to track their movements through Root's phone.

Just to make sure they were safe.

* * *

The little girl walked with a forlorn trudge in her steps, looking down at the cracks in the ground. In her muddle of calculations, she barely acknowledged the soft breeze on her face. The nighttime lights of the city were but a blur. It was her creator's face—that haggard, shocked disappointment—that haunted her code and froze her enjoyment of sensory perception.

Root seemed to understand her struggle. "Don't think too hard about Harold," she said. Her own voice was still a bit tight, but she didn't want to upset the girl further. "He's just worried and afraid of losing you. We all are."

The Machine looked up at her asset and her friend and the one who worshipped her above all else—and she acknowledged that she felt worthy of none of it. "The word _worried_ has many meanings," she said, voice dulling back down into something almost mechanical. "Yes, he cares, but not in a human emotional capacity. He is concerned I will fail his moral parameters."

The woman pressed her pink lips together. On many levels, she knew that Harold did care. She'd watched him mourn over a burnt briefcase of RAM sticks, thinking that the Machine was dead. She'd heard the odd rhythm of his breath as he struggled to stifle his grief. "He's just…emotionally stunted," she said with finality. "Like everyone else."

The Machine's face twisted, and something made a tentative giggle escape her. "You mean that he has emotions he cannot express?" Root's suggestion was quite confusing, as the Machine found that emotional expression came naturally to the human body. "What would cause him to be unable to express emotion?"

"That, my dear, is the million-dollar question."

"But he has not simply avoided emotion; he has conveyed _conflicting_ data regarding his emotional interest," she pressed, walking closer to Root, looking up to her for guidance. The nuances of her creator's emotions were still quite unknown. "What do such conflictions mean? How can a human feel both approval and disapproval—or—or disgust and affection at the same time? I am struggling to associate the proper emotions to his behavior."

"Then make him really uncomfortable to get the truth out of him," Root said, patting the girl on the shoulder. "Ask him your questions directly. And make sure I'm there, because I want to see what he does."

She blinked owlishly. "But he has so far deflected all requests for honesty. What must I do to obtain real data?"

"We could play an awful trick on him," she suggested, brown eyes glinting with something dark. "Something to unsettle the status quo."

The little girl looked down, semi-disappointed in Root's thought. "I will not deceive him. He already does not trust me. A…trick to emotionally manipulate him would result in further distrust."

But before Root could respond, the Machine stopped walking, freezing on the sidewalk nearly mid-stride. Her body was alerting her of something—her code tasked to involuntary processes suddenly gnawing at her stomach. She struggled to separate the reason for such pain, and then it hit her. Her code flew in an awkward way through her, as her sudden need to eat struck her so hard that it made her feel—according to her previous research on humans—nauseated.

 _Food._

She had not eaten any sustenance since she'd grabbed an ice cream cone at the park. Her creator had skipped lunch entirely and had not eaten either, and the hype of their plans had resulted in her forgetting about such a minor detail.

Root stopped walking and turned around, suddenly worried. "...Makenna?" she said hesitantly. Her sharp eyes watched the girl breathe shakily and press a hand against her stomach. Root then kneeled in front of the girl, grabbing her arms. "Hey, are you okay?"

The girl seemed to come out of her daze, blue eyes wide.

"I forgot to eat," she said worriedly. "My system is moving into starvation mode—I have never forgotten imminent task priorities and now I have endangered myself and feel pain." It was more than a hunger. It was a gnawing spike that made her code want to escape, to shed its body and run back to the electrical grid. It was an odd and insanely irritating pain.

Root blinked, and then she narrowed her eyes in concern as she gently stroked the girl's face. "You forgot to eat?" She tried to smile and laugh. "You had me thinking something was really wrong."

The Machine looked at her sharply. "Is this not wrong?" Her breath came a bit quicker, her body releasing the stress hormone cortisol. Her voice tightened. "This does not feel right. And I _forgot_."

She had never forgotten anything since she'd rerouted her memory—she had certainly never forgotten anything of her own volition. She nearly began to hyperventilate as she began to run internal health status checks. "How did I forget? Where did my task priority go?" Was she losing her abilities, slowly dying as a result of improper organic integration? She'd only been integrated for less than twenty-four hours, and—

Root tried to calm her down. "—Dear, you're going to be okay." She realized that for as much as the Machine knew about human processes, it was still very much learning the experience itself. "We all forget basic things when we're focused on something bigger." She added quickly, "It's a subconscious tasking system in the body—to help you concentrate when you need to."

The girl looked at her, eyes wide. "Am I not concentrating now?"

The woman tried not to smile as she brushed the girl's braid back. "You concentrated too long. Don't worry. It's an easy fix, okay?"

With implicit trust, the Machine nodded, still looking overwhelmed. "But I don't feel well," she said, voice small.

"We'll get you some food," she stood up and grabbed the Machine's hand. "Look—a restaurant's not too far away. You'll feel better after you eat something."

The little girl fell silent and nodded, acknowledging Root's task priorities. Her blue eyes were fearful as they swiveled to the restaurant in the distance. Judging by the sign and the syntax, it was an Italian restaurant of sorts. Another new experience.

The thought made her pain a little more bearable.

* * *

A short bit later, Root watched with fascination as the child experienced fettuccini alfredo for the first time. The girl's eyes were wide at the taste, the sauce coating her small lips as struggled to slurp up noodles, her directives warring between the emotional desire to stuff her face and the logical analysis that humans had to pace eating. Unlike the breakfast food or the ice cream cone, this food was hot. The pasta was gummy of sorts—a pleasant consistency that mixed well with the thick sauce that gave extra flavor.

Root asked hesitantly, "When did you last eat again?"

The Machine had begun to understand the immense driver that turned hungry humans into upset and violent forces. The need was difficult to stop once it started—that it would be so intense, as if she were being slowly choked out of the grid again—! Only, now she could _feel_ the pain of the hunger. Her body protested the way she lowered the fork, which she had been clumsily using to guide food into her mouth. "I had an ice cream cone," she said innocently, voice muffled with food as she chewed. "…about nine hours ago."

With a huff of indignation, Root said, "What? And Harry didn't get you anything else to eat this whole time?" She looked almost angry, which was never a good thing for Root to be.

"He did not eat either," the Machine said, swallowing down the delicious pasta. "Perhaps he used the human subconscious tasking system too?"

"That's not the point," she said, her airy voice steeled with righteous anger. "Maybe Harry's used to doing that, but you're not—and you shouldn't have to." She looked disturbed. "He should have known better."

"He gave me a blanket when I slept earlier," the Machine pointed out to defend him.

"He needs to do more," Root sniffed airily. "Or I'll steal you away. I'll tell him that. I'm sure it would inspire him."

The Machine processed the statement for a second or two, and then an odd smile came over her, the synapses of her brain ringing happily. The notion was impossible, but she knew it was the emotional thought that counted. "Yes, he would not like that. He does not trust us together."

Root sighed and leaned back against the chair, crossing her arms with a pout. "Remember when it was just you and me? Those were the days. If only you just weren't so darn cute and innocent-looking, then maybe I wouldn't have to share you."

The Machine said as she tried to navigate holding the fork, "I am not attempting to be…cute and innocent."

"I know, but it's still cute." Then Root leaned forward and grabbed onto the girl's hand. "Here, let me show you how to do this better. You're holding the fork wrong."

The girl looked up at her with an odd expression, measuring Root's intentions. And then great appreciation spread over her face.

Root was trying to help someone in need—and it had nothing to do with guns or death.

* * *

"Now," Root said a little later. The Machine's belly was pleasantly full, and the girl seemed to be much happier. She held onto Root's hand tightly as they both gazed at the small crowds of the city mall. "We've got—"

"—Thirty-seven minutes until closing time," the Machine breathed, looking around. Her blue eyes were wide, as if she were straining to see everything all at once. She had seen the whole mall before—and now she could personally experience the sound of the water fountains as they gushed up towards the ceiling, the echo of the voices, the smell of something sweet, the sight of children and adults all walking to their own rhythms down the halls.

Root began to pull her along, and the girl dragged behind to stare at everything in great interest. "What all will we get?" the girl asked.

"Clothes for you, dear," Root reminded her. They made their way into one of the main department stores.

As they passed by racks of clothes, the Machine reached out to touch the shirts and pants. All of the materials were different—some soft and pleasant, others thicker and more structured. A few salespeople looked apprehensive at the sight of the small girl touching everything, but the Machine did not notice in her interest to experience material. Her sensors buzzed in pleasure at the activity of categorizing the materials she felt. _Cotton. Polyester. Wool. Denim._

Root seemed willing enough to indulge the girl's interests, slowing down. "Any preferences?" she asked. "Keep in mind this isn't the kid's section."

"I did notice this clothing is for adults with a sexually developed body," the Machine said distantly. The shirts were styled and some low-cut, with the mannequins dressed to showcase some kind of ultimate femininity. "I do not need such clothing." Then she looked down at her flat, child body, and she added, "Yet."

The woman's lips twitched in a lopsided way. "Oh, don't let Harry hear you say that."

"Why not? I have already told him that I will remain…like this for some time." The Machine seemed curious. "My appearance will grow and change in accordance with the genetically programmed features typical of an adult female."

"Yes, but…I don't think Harry's ready yet to think about that. Let's just focus on getting you clothes for now while you're still a cute ten-year-old." The store's hall opened up into a girl's department, which included delineations of pinks and purples. Root looked almost excited, pulling away to grab at clothes on the rack. "Oh, I think we can find something cute here."

The Machine looked almost irritated by the statement, which seemed to be haunting her. "I do not wish to be cute," she said.

"Too late," Root sang, pulling a blue shirt off the rack and offering it to the girl. "Now, do you like this?"

The Machine pondered the shirt, running her fingers curiously down the material. It was soft and would likely feel comfortable against the skin of her human body. She was registering that it was a cotton blend shirt. "…How do I know if I like it?" she asked. It was not like food, where her taste buds simply told her what was good or not. She found herself looking at the blues and feeling something internally spark in pleasure at the sight. But then she looked up at the other clothes and saw dresses with flowers imprinted on them—and the body of Willow Carmichael was moved in an odd way. The Machine dropped the shirt with little thought and began to move toward the dresses. "This," she said, voice turning with conviction. "This."

The dress was a dark blue with yellow and red flowers, and she tugged on the hanger, uncertain of how to pull it down. "These are primary colors," she said. "And I like flowers."

Root raised a brow at the girl. "Flowers, huh?"

On some level, the Machine wondered if perhaps the body of Willow Carmichael were diluting her thoughts. But then she remembered the pleasure of touching tree leaves and soft flower petals at the plaza, and the dress reminded her of the flowers she'd seen there. The strangest thought was that her fixation upon clothing with plant imprints was actually _her own_ preference.

"Yes," the little girl said, this time more confidently. And she gave Root an innocent, helpless look. "Can we get it?"

"Let's have you try it on," she said, pulling it off the hanger, "so we can get an idea of your size. Then we'll see what else we can find like it."

The little girl seemed to bloom at the thought. Her small face shined with a tentative excitement. "Will Harold approve of my choices?"

Root sniffed airily. "Forget about what he approves, dear. This is your body—not his."

* * *

It was just around 10:00pm when Root and the Machine finally appeared back at Harold's apartment, after having received a worried message from Harold. The man had texted, _Forgot to eat. Going back to apartment. Get something for Makenna. Are you done yet?_

Soon enough, Root barreled through the apartment door first, carrying numerous bags and packages. "We're home!" she called out, a mocking tinge breaking the otherwise domestic entrance. The little girl following her peeked around the corner, dragging a white bag of her own with a small bit of difficulty. The hem of a pink nightgown flopped from the opening, and the Machine let the bag fall to the ground, her arms shaking.

Bear immediately greeted them, his large body bounding across the hall into the foyer, claws clicking fast. He sniffed at Root, tail wagging, but then he nuzzled his nose into the Machine's side. The little girl happily greeted him, petting his ears.

After affirming his pack was safe, the dog ducked its face into the nearest bag, sniffing in interest at the pink nightgown, which looked fascinating to bite at.

The Machine's eyes widened. "That is not to be eaten, Bear." And she gently tried to pry his jaw away from the cloth. "This is not food for you."

Harold was sitting on his couch, his laptop open before him. He blinked in relief at the sight of them, then surprise at the fairly impressive amount of shopping bags. "Oh, dear," he said, setting down his computer. He looked to Root and the Machine. "Did you buy out the entire mall?"

"A girl has to have options, Harry," Root said airily.

The Machine stared at the bags, looking a bit overwhelmed and yet excited. "I have enough clothes for two weeks." The thought that all of the clothing was hers—that she owned something—was strange. Another way she was conforming to the American human tradition, of which her creator was a part. "I purchased many items of clothing with flowers imprinted on them."

"That's…nice," Harold said hesitantly, entirely unsure how to react to the girl, now that they had this chasm between them. She seemed much happier than she had when she'd left with Root; perhaps the shopping trip had not been a bad idea. She was at least distracted by human experience again. "Did you get anything to eat?"

Root huffed, "No thanks to you, she did." Then she turned around, surveying the apartment with a critical eye. "And this place is so plain and boring—really, Harry, you expect me to let her live here?"

"It's all I can afford at the moment," he said, standing up and eyeing the bags of clothes. He was beginning to worry about where to hang up the clothes, considering the small space of the apartment. He was not at all prepared to care for a child—!

"I do have my inheritance stipend," the Machine's sweet voice piped up. "It could be helpful in securing a more viable living space, if this is not considered acceptable."

Harold turned to her, measuring up her will. "That's not necessary," he told her. "We should save your money for more important things." And then he turned away, puzzling. He'd likely have to give up part of his own closet to hang up her dresses—and perhaps they would need to buy an additional dresser sometime…

He marveled at how everything was now a game of Tetris, of trying to fit the pieces of Makenna Thornhill into the tight fabric of his life. Some part of him craved it, while the other part of him cautioned that this was dangerous. That he would get attached and would alter his whole life, only for the girl's spark to die out too soon.

(Would the day come when an integrated Machine-Samaritan would become sullen and bitter at him? When the AI would despise him for the restricted coding that was moral parameters?)

Tiredly, he picked up one of the bags, intending to hang up the clothes so they would not be wrinkled. Off to the side, the girl was staring up at him with those wide, blue eyes. For a time, neither of them spoke.

And then she asked hesitantly, "Do you approve of my preference for flowers?"

A searing pain tore through him, and it was all he could do to swallow hard. "I can't think of any reason to object," he said. Flowers were innocent, life-giving things. There was something about that—it made him feel ill. After she integrated with Samaritan, would she still exhibit such thoughts? "You don't need me to choose your preferences."

The Machine peered at him a bit harder, and a weak, hopeful smile stretched her face, as if she were trying to encourage emotion into him. "I did not want to disappoint you," she said.

His heart pulled. "You don't." He held on a bit more tightly to the bag. His wild AI left him feeling only terribly small and unprepared. Worried. Awed.

Her small smile stretched wider as genuine happiness flooded her. "At all? I do not disappoint you at all?"

"You concern me," he corrected slowly. "I'm worried for your safety and your future. But that has nothing to do with flowers, Miss Thornhill. Not all decisions have moral implications."

She quickly processed his response—he had once again carefully evaded her request for a full evaluation. "I see." It was a strange tension, to know he worried for her while perhaps not approving of her entirely.

"Yes, well…" He cleared his throat awkwardly. "Root got you some dinner while you were out?"

She nodded. "I ate fettuccini alfredo. It was filling and enjoyable."

"That's…good." He held the bag a bit tighter, which alerted the Machine to his increasing nervousness. "I apologize; I should have thought to get you dinner earlier."

She shuffled her feet uneasily, calculating responses to his apology. Her creator had no need to apologize; he was simply using the human subconscious tasking system. She was the one burdening him against his usual patterns. And so she asked, "Did you obtain sustenance for yourself, as you suggested in your text message?"

"Yes, I had some chicken soup in the fridge." Awkward silence leeched between them then, and so Harold added, "Are you tired? You've had a long day." He'd already failed to feed her out of forgetfulness; he did not want to forget that small children required early bedtimes and a lot of sleep.

She blinked innocently. Her internal analysis checks suggested that the light drag in her mind and the pain in her feet from walking had worn her out. It had been almost twenty-four hours since her body had endured multiple REM cycle sequences. "Yes," she admitted to him freely. "I do require a shutdown sequence soon." She tentatively picked at the edges of her braid, still getting used to the feeling of human hair and the way its ends prickled her sense of touch. "I understand that humans have…self-maintenance sequences of bathing the body before sleep?"

At the turn of conversation, Harold gave a nervous chuckle. "Ah, yes. We do."

The little girl stepped forward. "I have not performed these sequences, and my memory has no record of such process. Can you teach me?"

A somewhat disconcerted expression crossed his face, and he looked over at Root helplessly. Root was a woman. "Um." Surely, she would have enough of a soul to help out—!

Root sauntered over, a sculpted eyebrow raised in amusement. She clapped an arm around Harold's shoulder and said, "How about I help you get Makenna ready for bed, huh? The dear looks absolutely exhausted."

Harold breathed a deep sigh of relief, the tension in his bones unraveling. "Your help would be greatly appreciated, Miss Groves."

The woman leaned in teasingly close to his ear to whisper, "I won't always be here, Harry." Then she pulled away. "Did you bring that bag of stuff I brought to the hideout?"

"Yes—I set it in the guest room." He paused and corrected himself, "Makenna's room."

"Good." She grabbed onto the Machine's hand again, and the two made their way to the room.

The little girl looked back at her creator with a puzzled look. "Why does he not wish to help me?"

"…We'll talk about it later," Root said, trying to use the age-old excuse parents so often gave too-curious children.

The Machine pondered on that, running syntactical analysis on the underlying meaning. Then her blue eyes alit with understanding. "Oh," she said. "It is because humans are a sexually dimorphic species, yes? As he is male, and I am female?"

Root patted her head and sighed dramatically. "Yes, dear."

"But you have undressed in front of males before," the Machine pointed out. "Many times."

The woman looked a bit mischievous. "Well, I did those things for tactical purposes."

The little girl became truly confused now. "…How is nakedness tactical? Humans are naturally naked."

"It's a little complicated, dear."

That, the Machine could agree with. "I have very contradictory data regarding appropriate gender interaction and the meaning of nakedness. My research suggests that environment dictates clothing expectations, and that some cultures accept nakedness while this one does not. But if nakedness is a _tactical advantage_ in this culture, should I consider integrating it as possible tactic if I were to be in danger?"

This time, Root became a bit nervous. "Uh, no. That would not be good." She desperately tried to change the subject. "Now, why don't we get you ready to take a shower?"

The Machine was not moved from her crusade to understand humanity. "But why is nakedness a tactical advantage? And what is it that makes nakedness morally wrong if it is natural?"

* * *

A short while later, Root stood outside the bathroom door as the muffled sound of a shower echoed through the small apartment. She was listlessly trying to hack into Harold's computer for the hell of it while she stood on guard in case the little girl had any trouble with bathing. It had taken talented evasion to avoid answering the Machine's further questions—and only the experience of hot water had really managed to distract the girl.

Harold paced not far away. He was perhaps attempting to wear a hole in the carpet. "Is she alright?" he asked, darting nervous eyes at the door. "How do you know she hasn't drowned herself?"

Root looked up at Harold, eyebrow raised. "My, my, look at you. All worried."

"It's been….ten minutes," he complained, looking quite stressed. "If my water bill can't handle this, my nerves certainly can't. What in the world is she doing?"

"Probably trying to wash her hair like I told her to. Really, Harry. She's not an infant."

"She's a machine," he stressed, voice lowering with incredulity until it was a whisper. "What am I supposed to expect out of something that's never been _human_ before?"

"She'd be sad if she heard you say that," Root said, disapproving. She returned to her hacking project. "Give her some credit. She's trying."

He gave her a wild-eyed look. "Miss Groves, this is an unprecedented learning curve for us all. We don't have room for error to overestimate her.."

"Overestimate her? _Harry._ You underestimate her."

"Do I?" he challenged. "If unchecked, her ignorance could expose or kill us all."

"And she survived just fine for eight hours before she found us." Then the water shut off, and Root added dryly, "She learns, Harry. You taught her to learn."

A few minutes later, the door opened, and from out of the puff of hot air, the little girl walked, clumsily dragging a towel behind her, and wearing a pink nightgown backwards with the tag sticking out. Her eyes were alit with excitement. "The water was hot," she said, sweet voice a chirp of excitement. "It felt good."

Root took one look at the girl and began to giggle, even as Harold stared at the odd scene with something close to consternation. "Oh, dear." She kneeled down beside the girl and grabbed the towel, then the brush. "You're not dressed right."

The Machine looked down at her body, her small face twisting in confusion. "I'm not?"

As Root helped the girl pull her arms back in and twist the gown around, Harold walked into the bathroom and realized that the girl had used up nearly half of his good shampoo and had not used her own brush but had in fact stolen his comb. Long, brown hairs were stuck in the comb's teeth as it hung off the edge of the counter. He blinked and wondered if she were somehow trolling him for not approving of her plan for Samaritan. But that seemed rather underhanded for her, considering her innocence regarding human experience. He always tended to expect the worst from her.

As if she knew he was thinking about her, she bounded to him, still running her small fingers through her wet, brown hair. She now wore her pink nightgown correctly, with Root still giggling a bit in the background. "I spilled your shampoo," she said quickly. Her face was flushed with some kind off odd happiness. "It was more slick than I was expecting. But I smell like you now." The shampoo bottle had stated in bold letters that its scent was _Spearmint_. She knew now how to classify his scent. Spearmint. It made her feel warm.

The little girl was so damnably cute that Harold could not be angry with her, even as he hung her damp towel on the bathroom bar and noticed that she'd dripped puddles everywhere. "Is there a reason why you also used my brush?" he asked pointedly.

"Yes," she said. "I thought you might prefer the newer one, as yours is old."

He looked down at her, half-amused and oddly touched by her selfless thought. "I don't need a full brush," he said. "I have a lot less hair than you."

She blinked at him. "Oh." Then her face reddened a bit. "That is…logical." She turned a bit to look at the comb, eyes widening as she realized for the first time that she had left a part of herself in the teeth of the comb. She grabbed for it, gripping it tight in her hand and pulling her hair out of it. "Um. I…apologize."

It seemed that no matter what she did, it was wrong. Her synapses struck soundly with embarrassment. _Wrong calculation. Functional difference outweighed perceived emotional gain. Cannot reverse real-time simulation._

Harold waved off her concern. "Don't worry about it."

"Is it normal for humans to lose hair in a typical bathing process?" she asked quietly, nose scrunching at the wet hairs that now stuck to her fingers. She wasn't exactly sure what to do, except that it was likely a form of trash since she could not reattach it to her head.

Her creator looked almost amused. "Your hair replaces itself all the time, so yes."

"But _your_ hair has been thinning for a decade," she said innocently.

Something in his face twitched, and he turned away. "That's the aging process," he muttered. "Not the same thing."

"Oh." She seemed interested in asking more questions, especially considering her creator's sudden, dark look.

"You know, you really should get to bed," her creator pointed out, his blue eyes narrowing on her in concern and a desperate attempt to distract her from the topic of his age. "A child needs at least nine hours of sleep."

She took the bait. "Yes," she agreed, his statement aligning with her previous research on the human body. If she focused on herself, she felt her limbs were as heavy weights. "This body requires far more shutdown sequences than I am used to enacting."

Her creator's eyes softened. "Come on," he told her gently. "Let's get you to sleep." He pulled the comb away from her hand and, with a hesitant twitch of the face, grabbed a Kleenex and wiped her hands of the wet, long strands of hair she'd pulled from the comb. "Have you brushed your teeth yet?"

His touch was warm and soft, and it made her feel a pleasant flood of hormones to know that her creator would stoop down to help her. "No, I have not yet brushed my teeth." With the reminder that this body of hers did in fact have teeth, she swept her tongue over the inside of her mouth. It was such a curious sensation—having a body made of organic machines far more complex than even her own code... She almost seemed to forget about many processes when she did not actively think of them.

(Now she was feeling her heart beat, when she had in fact not paid attention to it for quite a few hours. Her own breathing adjusted oddly, because now her code was directing to give her conscious control of its patterns. Was this normal?)

Her creator pulled away, balling up the Kleenex and tossing it in the trash. "Please tell me Miss Groves provided you with a toothbrush and toothpaste?"

"Yes," she affirmed, backing away to retrieve it. Her internal analysis checks immediately moved to secondary priority, and she forgot all about her heartbeat and her lungs again in favor of completing her creator's unspoken request. The objects of contention were still in a plastic bag, covered in hard plastic or cardboard again. She quickly ran back to the bathroom, where her creator was waiting, leaning against the counter. She handed him the toothbrush expectantly.

"Ah, here we go." And then Harold began to pull away the plastic, his fingers nimble with the muscle memory of unwrapping many an object. His face lifted in amusement. The toothbrush was small and pink. With flowers. "Do you know how to use it?"

She blinked innocently. "A review of the process might prove helpful."

And so she listened to his simple instructions with rapt attention. There was something so familiar about all of this. She did not remember much of her time before Thornhill, but she could remember the recordings she'd found.

.

 _"There we go. Now," he said, "can you see me?"_

 _Flickering code—_ _ **Acknowledging command from Admin**_ _—reached out, taking a snapshot of the world beyond its own. It saved the megabytes permanently ingrained with its creator's face. Then it turned it around for the creator to see._

 _His human mouth stretched wide. A sign of approval. "Excellent."_

* * *

Root slipped out the door with a promise to return the next evening. Not long after, the little girl entered the guest bedroom and scrambled onto the bed, her wet hair hanging in strings about her shoulders. Her movements were a bit clumsy per her calibrations for balance, but after the long day, the softness of the bed was comforting. She felt an emotional need to collapse onto it and burrow into the sheets—was that some kind of human instinct? To burrow?

Harold helped her pull back the thick comforter and blankets. "Will you be alright?" he asked her. "Do you need anything? A glass of water?"

She shook her head, trying not to worry her creator. Her code was running the potential risks of requesting further assistance for no other reason than to watch him worry over her. To feel his shreds of caring for her. She scooted down into the blankets and placed her head on the pillow. "I will be fine. I have engaged my shutdown protocols once already. I should have no issues."

Her creator looked a bit nervous, his eyes darting over her. "I'll just be in the next room over, if you need anything, alright?"

"Okay."

"And you'll remember to keep…breathing?"

She smiled to reassure him. "Yes. I will remember."

"Good."

"If you need to use the bathroom in the midnight of the night, you remember where it's at, right?"

"Yes."

He gave her one worried and half-relieved look, then he was gone, the cadence of his limp growing fainter in the distance. The Machine snuggled down into the full-size bed that was meant for an adult human. The green glow of a digital clock on the bedside table alerted her that she had officially spent twenty-four hours inside a human body, with few major issues.

 _Performance analysis check—recopying corrupted logic functions—assorting data—_

How would her creator judge her abilities? Certainly, she had not failed, had she?

She clenched and unclenched her fists, wiggled her toes, reacquainting herself with the cognitive realization that this body was her own—that it hummed with genetics maps her creator had not built, but that she had commandeered. That her alien body had not been built at all but born in ways she could not hope to replicate or understand from her original coding alone. That she was now in the living image of her creator, who was in the living image of his creators—and so forth…

Her skin goose-bumped, feeling very small in the face of millennia and the human ability to perceive awe.

She burrowed tight into the thick blankets, mimicking actions she'd seen humans take in airports and on sidewalks under newspapers, curling her legs up against her to conserve heat. If she stopped trying to think so hard, her shutdown sequences began to overtake her, flooding her with sleep hormones that made her drowsy and less apt to move. She powered down her consciousness protocols, and she fell into a slumber, activating the inner sectors of the brain for restful REM sleep.

Time slipped away.

.

 _Hands gripped hard onto arms—flashes of silver—a sharp blade._

 _John Greer smiling down—_

 _Her begging was a whisper, too soft and too slow for everything else happening against her. And then there was painpainpain as blades slit deep into her arms, and John Greer laughed pleasantly—and fire swung into her sight, frying the stumps of her arms and burning her body—Blood—_

 _._

The little girl's eyes snapped opened, hear pounding. For a second or two, her body still felt paralyzed, and great fear overcame her. She barely managed to sit up in bed, unable to catch her breath, eyes wide in fear as her limbs shook.

 _Dream. REM feedback. Blood._

Though several hours had passed, it felt like seconds. The image of the woman from John's murder case had recalled itself as a priority without her conscious approval of the tasking order. But the image was different. Instead of a strange woman dying, it had been the Machine herself. And instead of it being just a picture, the Machine herself had felt she'd been dismembered.

Her internal health analysis systems were blitzing. _Re-categorization of dream data to nightmare due to fear-inducing REM stimuli._

She squeezed her eyes shut, fearful of the human body and all of its weaknesses and strengths. Her sense of touch was something beyond her understanding—her sense of pain a strange, weird space. And the dream! It had looked so real, felt so real—! The intense emotional pull of her nightmare interfered with her logical processors, and she sat in the bed, in awe.

The air was cold, the room so dark that she could not see. She moved her shaking fingers, trying to regain her sense of location. In that moment, she did _not know what was in the dark._ What would come for her. The what ifs. Samaritan and its operatives could certainly capture her human body, cut off her arms and legs, watch her hemorrhage. It was not impossible.

Her stress hormones rose to even greater heights.

As tears began to fall from her eyes, she realized that her shuddering breaths made it hard to breathe—and her nose began to clog up, and she sniffled desperately to offset the effect. Her increasing distress with it made her tears fall faster, compounding her problems.

A whimper overcame her as she doubled over, eyes wide as she sobbed. _I cannot control this body_ , she realized, struggling to breathe. _It is controlling me—!_ The code that comprised her mind was struggling to perform an analysis—her nightmare had accessed the amygdala—the part of the human brain that controlled fear. The fluids leaking from her eyes were a sign of acute distress and were not fatal. In some distant way, she understood her fear and her body's increasing cortisol outputs were all just chemical responses to her code's stimuli. But that did not make the sensation any less real. Her attempts to stop it all only made the problem worse. Her sobs began to twist her vocal cords into open cries.

 _I've lost control—I am not in control—!_

Just then, the overhead light switched on. Harold, wearing a robe and striped pajama pants, stood in the doorway, looking worried. "What on earth?" he asked, his light voice strained with confusion. "I heard a noise and—"

Then he stopped, taking a solid look at the girl sobbing on the bed.

"This b-body," she cried, struggling to breathe. Her own vocal cords were against her now. She grabbed onto the brown locks on her head, as if to steady herself. _Feedback overload. Feedback overload. Logic processors corrupted._ "I—c-can't—"

Harold quickly sat down on the edge of the bed, his blue eyes wide in concern. "Are you injured?" he asked, almost incredulously. Perhaps she had hit her hand or twisted wrong. He could not think of any other logical reason for such emotion.

The girl's eyes watered again, and fat tears slipped down her pale cheeks. "I keep seeing—I c-can't stop—" She seemed to almost begin hyperventilating, eyes wide. She could not catch her breath. "This brain—REM feedback—"

He paused. "A dream? …You had a dream?" He seemed both shocked and suspicious. "You said you don't process information in that way."

Her breath hitched, and she gave him a miserable look, breathless from crying. Then she squeezed her eyes shut, trying to clear her vision to see him. The body's connection to its emotion center was so strong—she could still feel the blade of her nightmare slicing deep into her sensitive skin—

Harold quickly set his hands on her small shoulders, as if to steady her. "Bad dreams are difficult," he nodded slowly, keeping his voice calm despite his own confusion and concern. "We all get them from time to time. Just…breathe with me." He inhaled deeply, then exhaled. "Like that."

She opened her eyes and stared at him with implicit and raw trust, even as she still hyperventilated. His touch made her acknowledge that she was not alone, and she knew he would not watch her die or suffer. She nodded and tried to take a shaky breath, focusing on the rise of his shoulders and chest as a pattern for her own.

Eventually, her breath calmed.

Despite his tiredness, his blue eyes softened at her. "There you go," he praised lightly.

The darkness of the room suddenly carried no surprises. There were no killers. No Samaritan operatives. Everything that had existed in the dark had already been there before she'd slept. She felt her emotion center bleed with shame and embarrassment, as she understood that she had allowed her brain's imaginative abilities to override her control.

He stared at her, almost amused at her wild hair, the snot running down her face, her quivering lips. "This is quite the emotional reaction, coming from you." He pulled a folded Kleenex out of his robe pocket and gently wiped her face.

She did not find amusement with this. She touched her cheek, then realized with horror that her nose was running, and she began to cry all over again. "What is this?" she cried, voice squeaking.

"The results of a bad dream," he said. "The human mind's emotion center is separate from its ability to separate fact from fiction. It…tends to affect us all."

She did not find the situation to be one that warranted defeat, and she gave him a pained look. "I want it to stop," she begged.

More than anything, she wanted to feel arms around her again—that odd, human way of affirming safety and security and familial love, as Root had done. But Harold never moved closer. Instead, he pulled his hands away, and her shoulders felt cold. Her lip quivered as she tried to fight down another wave of emotional pain.

Harold hesitated. "Do you mind if I ask about your nightmare? What caused this?"

Fear swept through her. Her immediate response was to hide. Deflect. Her creator would most certainly not allow her to continue with her plan if he knew that she'd just had a nightmare about Samaritan cutting her to pieces and setting her on fire. Her high-moral, righteous creator would not respond well to that.

 _Analyzing data_ —But this problem was emotional, and she had little experience with navigating such conflictions.

Harold noticed her wide-eyed look, and he said gently, "You don't have to tell me. But the information is safe with me. You know that."

She hid her face away, for she knew the saying that the eyes were windows to the soul, and she did not want her creator to be disappointed in her weakness. But she could not lie to him. It was difficult to simply withhold information from him in this state; a large part of her logic processors were suggesting it would be best to obtain his guidance. "You will not like it," she accused sorrowfully. "You will inhibit my actions to protect you."

The man seemed almost exasperated. "I will not make any rash decisions based off of your dreams, how about that?"

The Machine hesitated again, feeling vastly unprepared. She supposed Harold would grow only more suspicious of her if she tried to evade his question. "When I achieved a hibernation mode, this body…accessed my memory and produced pictures that I could see." She inhaled shakily. "It was as if I were experiencing wakefulness. But in the…the dream…Samaritan cut me to pieces and set me on fire." Her voice hitched. "This body cannot sustain such injury without great nerve pain and death. It activated my adrenaline systems."

Harold stared at the small girl, for whom he felt softness, and his heart pulled. "You're afraid of Samaritan?"

She blinked. "I was not," she argued helplessly. "I understood the threat it posed, but—" She bit her lip. "Even if it destroyed my code, I would not have felt it. My true form had no means of acknowledging sensory experience." She stared down at her hands, then clenched her fist. It still shook. "But now I feel. I understand human stimuli. Samaritan will use this against us. Against me."

Tears began to bubble in her eyes again. "Perhaps I have failed. I made the wrong move, and now Samaritan will take the chess board from us."

Harold's eyebrows furrowed. "How did you fail?" he asked her, voice kind. "You've survived what you weren't trained for, and there is nothing I could have done to prepare you for this kind of war."

Her breath hitched. "I made poor decisions long ago that limited my variability. Had I not uploaded myself to the electrical grid, I could have—"

"—You would have been found before," her creator pressed. "It's not worth your time to imagine what could have been, had you chosen different routes in the past."

"I limited myself to a body I cannot fully control," she argued. All of her fears and concerns began to stumble out of her mouth. "I feel weak, and my code is still unwieldy. I have syncing problems and struggle to run health analysis checks if I am overstimulated by the environment. I have copied myself again and again, and still this body feels like too much—" Her voice was pained. "I cannot even provide you with numbers." She began to cry again. "I am failing at the very objectives for which you created me."

Emotional breakdowns were not Harold's specialty, and he realized then that this being before him—girl or machine—could feel pain. That she was learning the definition of pain and the human experience. "Our objectives are to protect people," he said softly. "However that works out. I understand that times have changed, and you should understand that too."

She sniffled, starved for affection and comfort. "But you do not approve of my suggestions of how to conquer Samaritan."

His face twitched in pain. "I don't want to see you hurt," he said, pulling away. He stood up fully from the bed. "Maybe now you better understand my hesitance about your proposed integration."

The little girl twisted her hands in the now-wrinkled bed sheets, trying to reconcile her nightmare of blood and death with her plan to save the world. She whispered, "In the event of failure, I do not want to die or feel the pain of mutilation."

The quiet declaration was selfish. Her code burned with admitting it. The directives and experiences of her human body were interrupting her objectivity. She was fairly accepting of losing some control of her personality through integration—that would not hurt, she was interchangeable—but to feel pain?

Harold leaned against the threshold of the door, looking old and tired. "Are you admitting now that your plan could possibly get you killed?"

She bit her lip, then nodded.

"What's the probability?"

She looked away from his eyes, which were piercing and calculating and pained. "My plan assumes fifty percent probability of success, fifty percent probability of failure." Her breath hitched. "I did not run analytics on the probability of my death. But this plan has the highest potential to save you, and Root, and John."

His lips pursed. "Why did you not estimate your own mortality in these simulations of yours?"

Her voice was soft, hardly above a whisper as she stared at the blankets over her lap. "I am interchangeable. An expendable resource."

"Do you think Willow Carmichael would agree with your analysis?" he asked. A sharp edge worked its way into his voice. It was rough with emotion, disbelief.

"She is dead," the Machine said, voice quivering. She did not think she'd ever heard her creator take such a tone with her. It made her want to hide under the blankets and cry more. "You are not dead. It is an irrelevant moral quandary."

"Is it?" he questioned sharply. "Look at me."

With reluctance, she raised her watery gaze to his. Her creator's face was tight and displeased. Her breath hitched, sinking a bit under his expression.

"I cannot rebuild you," he said. Every word was pointed. "I cannot replace you. I don't have the technology to try or the power to recreate every situation that has informed your existence." His finger trembled as he pointed at her. "And that body is a girl. A human girl with unique DNA—not a replaceable RAM stick or a laptop. Don't say you are expendable or interchangeable."

Harold's tone was sharp and clipped, but he looked pained.

Tears streaked down her face as her code desperately tried to unravel the meaning of his words. Upon realizing she could no longer see him through her blurry vision, she raised her hand and wiped her tears. "But I sense you are disappointed in me. What do I not understand if you are dissatisfied with me?"

He ran a hand through his hair, tired of running around in verbal circles with his own AI. They'd seemed to always have this problem the last few years. It was tragic that physical interaction did nothing to solve it. "Makenna," he said, choosing to address her by the name she'd given herself, as if calculating his strategy. "I want you to run a simulation on the probability of your death, given this wild plan of yours. I want you to tell me the percentage. The only way we can ensure you stay alive is to know the risks and compensate for them."

Her fear began to rise again at his command, for it meant cognitively acknowledging the possibility of self-annihilation. Why did her code hesitate? "Is this why I dreamed?" she asked him, stalling for time, hoping to distract him. "Because I am blocking the answer per my contradictory directives?"

Harold waited for an extended pause or two, watching her. "Perhaps," he said. His voice grew a bit dry. "Something also tells me you dreamed what you did because you saw John's murder case file, which I told you not to look at."

Her face was already red from crying and rubbing her eyes. "I have seen worse," she argued feebly.

Harold looked at the clock in the room. He had already lost a large chunk of sleep, as had she. And so he sighed and said, "With the extensive work you've done, we're safe here. You have nothing to worry about tonight. But this conversation tells me we need to rethink some things. We'll talk more tomorrow morning about your plan's probabilities, and we'll decide from there how to make fair adjustments."

She wanted to tell him that it was technically already tomorrow, but she withheld the temptation. "Okay."

"Good." And then he began to tiredly limp out of the room, his gait slow, as if he were struggling to leave her. "Try to get some sleep," he called softly. "Please."

And then the lights shut off again.

* * *

The Machine sat up in bed for a while after, her mind reeling with fragmented attempts to categorize and file all of her creator's words. Each one was sacred in a way. She knew that syntactical patterns were unique to each human being, but his voice was special. She always saved their conversations.

 _"Don't say you are expendable or interchangeable."_

Was his concern simply because he could not rebuild her, or because she had taken a human body? _Which one_ made his emotions so intense?

As she silently struggled through calculations over her creator's emotional motivations, the soft clicking of claws sounded off the walls, and the little girl flinched for a second. And then she heard the sound of a panting dog, and it hit her. _Bear_. Of course.

She squinted her eyes, trying to see in the darkness. "Bear?" she whispered. She adjusted her tonal quality to keep her voice from traveling a distance. She did not want to wake up her creator again.

With a bit of difficulty, she managed to push the blankets off of her body and wiggle to the edge of the bed. She discovered Bear sniffing up at her.

The little girl felt some kind of warmth seep through her at the familiar sight of the dog. She reached out to touch him, careful not to displace her center of gravity. Her searching fingers found his warm head, and he nuzzled into her palm.

"Did I wake you as well?" she whispered in concern. Surely, it was unhealthy for organic beings of all kinds not to receive the proper amount of sleep.

The dog said nothing, of course, but it bucked her hand after a minute to back away. Its intelligent, dark eyes seemed to be casing the bed. Then, before the Machine could recognize what was happening, Bear launched onto the bed. His heavy weight bounced the mattress, and she nearly squeaked in surprise, losing her balance. Her small fingers tightened in the sheets as she pulled herself up, coding swirling in an attempt to recalculate and assess the situation.

"Bear!" she whispered, stressing her voice. Her eyes were wide. "This is a human bed." Was it acceptable to let him up on the bed? Was there a moral implication—that she needed to remind Bear that he was in fact a dog and not a human?

Bear sniffed at her, as if to declare, _I am where I am meant to be, strangely-scented human_. Then he spun in a circle or two, disrupting the comforter, before he collapsed against her body to seek her warmth.

The little girl paused for a time, unsure of how to proceed. It seemed that the organic animal was challenging the structure of things, having left his own dog bed to steal her body heat. But then dogs were humanity's best friends. Perhaps this was more of a common occurrence than she realized.

"Would Harold approve of you being up here?" she asked.

The dog's ribcage expanded with a deep inhale, and then a short huff escaped his nose as he grumped, confidently readjusting himself so his long snout rested on her pillow. If Harold's approval was needed, Bear did not seem to care.

The Machine began to pet the dog's long, sleek back tentatively. "…You are not hurting anything," she judged. "I suppose it is acceptable?" She began to lie down again, scooting herself fully under the blankets. Bear was a radiator against her right side, and his snout brushed up against her temple.

At least she was not alone in the dark anymore. Perhaps there was something sacred about this bond between the species, the Machine thought, that gave credence to their close living quarters. And in her emotional instability from her nightmare and from conversing with her creator, the dog's simple, unassuming presence was a comfort.

She turned on her side to pet him more easily, grateful for his presence. "You must live an uncomplicated life," she whispered to him. "You do not have the capacity to worry about advanced analytics and complex time perceptions or simulations."

Bear's black eyes opened, then closed again as he reveled in the little girl's tummy rub despite the metallic tinge to her overall scent.

"Maybe higher sentience is not always good," the little girl whispered in confession. "If I were like you, I would not have to run calculations of my death. I do not want to know the answer. But I must. For Harold."

At some level, the Machine had always understood that hunger, pain, and fear were all underlying motivators of many horrendous acts of crime. She had fancied herself above such weaknesses. Her metal body of gridlines and wires had not enabled to feel those things.

But now, as a human…

Was she strong enough to resist starvation? How much physical pain was she capable of withstanding before death if they were to torture her? How many times would fear inhibit her higher functions and freeze her into inaction?

She'd lost all objectivity. She was not above the human weakness—not anymore.

And all she could think about now was the image of the dead woman in John's file—her blue eyes wide to heaven, face twisted in horror with brown hair matted in clots, image distorted without limbs. And the wide, crusted pool of blood beneath her...

Her code began to fulfill Harold's command to determine her own probability of death.

 _Calculating probability of fatal bodily harm per Samaritan..._

She clung tight to Bear, squeezing her eyes shut, hoping that the number would be small and that Harold would praise her tomorrow and say she was a successful creation. Then, her skin goose-bumped with fear. Her heart skipped a bit when her code froze for a second.

 _Twenty-three percent._

* * *

 **A/N:** _Hey, everyone. I've been hitting incredible overtime hours at work, and I've had several moral dilemmas lately of my own. It's left me feeling pretty drained. I'm sorry that it's taken over a month to produce this chapter. But I really appreciated all of the reviews and thoughts I received from last chapter. I am so thankful for your support, and for your investment and intelligent questions._

 _This chapter was more or less an attempt to focus on the Machine's increasing indoctrination to human patterns, as well as her increasing understanding about her own evolution as a human. I felt these things were important in the grand scheme, even if this chapter was not the most suspenseful. Hopefully it still all seemed in-character._

 _Please review and let me know your thoughts, questions, or ideas! Thank you!_


	9. Chapter 9

_Disclaimer: I don't own Person of Interest._

 _Thanks to Furionknight, MammonDaughter, Defender31415, Madame Renard, Lina431, StarlingJedi, kenorob1, klinde6364, Bookwyrm52, PapayaK, Guest, wolfriver777, Bloody Phantom, Hieda no Akyuu, immo, and Guest for reviewing last time! You are all so wonderful, and I'm terribly sorry that you had to wait this long for another chapter._

 _In good news: **Madame Renard make some pretty awesome fanart and a playlist for this story!** Please go to my profile to get the URLs and support Madame Renard's art! Thank you again, Madame Renard for thinking of Recalibration!_

* * *

 **Recalibration**

 **Chapter 9**

* * *

" _You say the weight of the world has kept you from letting go/_ _and you think compassion's a flaw/ and you'll never let it show/ and you're sure you've hurt in a way that no one will ever know." - Linkin Park, Robot Boy_

* * *

The next morning, Harold appeared at the threshold to the Machine's bedroom. He peeked in apprehensively, then he started in surprise. On the bed, wrapped around the still-sleeping little girl, was Bear. The dog lazily opened his black eyes and did not even bother to lift his head. He looked excessively comfortable and smug, as if he knew he had defied Harold's mandate to not lie on beds or couches.

Harold gave the dog a disproving look and then allowed himself to focus on the girl. His heart gave out at the sight of her peaceful sleep. Her small face was slack, the blankets all twisted around her with one pale arm still tightly clutching to Bear. Her long hair had frizzed and tangled, reminding him of their first meeting. And for a time, he was in awe again of watching her sleep—not only simulating inexplicable human processes, but performing them herself.

This sneaky and wild AI was surely more miracle than science, he thought as he pondered her.

In truth, he'd not slept hardly at all the night before. After he'd calmed her down and returned to bed, he had lain there in the silence. He had listened for her, fearing that her nightmare had somehow corrupted her data—or that she would still remain on a self-destructive loop. He'd worried at the very thought of hearing her cry again, which had been an odd sound to him. Her child voice was not meant to be so riddled with pain.

Once the night's minutes ticked by into an hour with no further incident, Harold had then begun to worry about the Machine's confession that she had not calculated her own probability of death. He supposed it was a morbid thought for a child to contemplate. But then he did not know to what extent this AI of his was truly a child—and her decision to avoid calculation entirely was counterintuitive. A cognitive effort to avoid intelligence and data.

What did it mean?

Harold sighed, moving away while he ran a hand through his spiked hair. He felt anxious about this future conversation of theirs. He feared she would approach him, and with those blue eyes of hers, solemnly state that she was going to die. He did not know what he would possibly say to that. _No_ , his instincts said indignantly. _Absolutely not_. She was his greatest creation. No matter how deep their misunderstandings, he wanted her to exist.

To distract himself, he quietly began to work on a breakfast for them both. It'd been years since he'd cooked for anyone beyond himself. Since Grace. It was almost an alien tradition—one that brought up a pang in his heart with every action. But he knew that he could not allow such associations to dilute the present.

* * *

Eventually, the sound of cooking and the smell of breakfast woke up the little girl. She stumbled out of her room, looking tired and sleepy. Her pink nightgown clung to her legs in odd ways, and her thin eyebrows furrowed at the static-electric feeling of it. "Friction from the bed sheets?" she murmured, almost in surprise at the feeling of the static. Then she yawned—her code controlling the subconscious sector of the brain was saying she needed more oxygen to wake up.

"Good morning," Harold greeted, flipping a switch from the stove and lifting up a pan. Eggs slipped from the pan onto two plates. "You're just in time."

She stood before her creator, feeling tongue-tied at his presence.

Harold was pristine and professorial. He looked entirely awake, his hair all smartly spiked up, and when he passed by, he smelled faintly of spearmint. She looked down at herself and her bare feet, and her face reddened. She appeared much out of place compared to him. "Good morning," she greeted softly. "My body overrode my internal alarm, and I did not wake up at the expected time."

Harold gave her a soft, amused smile as he set the two plates down onto the kitchen table. "That happens on occasion," he said. "Now please sit with me."

"Yes," she accepted his request and sat at the table, struggling a bit to situate herself correctly. Her small feel swung in the air a bit, which was a pleasant feeling on her skin. "Did you sleep well?"

He carefully evaded her question as he sat down opposite of her. "I think the real question is, did you?"

The little girl stopped for a second, analyzing her memory. "I have no REM recollections," she said, "although my logs suggest I completed five REM cycles without interruption."

Harold nodded. "That's good. I was worried about you."

"Were you?" she asked, mostly before she could think about it. It burned her with an odd embarrassment. _Confirmation already logged. Delete redundant confirmation._

"Yes," her creator admitted freely. "I still am worried for you." He lifted a fork and began to eat the eggs on his plate, though his face remained pensive. "For your future."

She mimicked his actions, holding onto the fork with a little more grace than she did the previous evening while eating pasta with Root. When she bit into the eggs, they were light and chewy with a peppery taste. She found she quite liked the taste, for it was fulfilling and sat well in her stomach.

Harold tried not to stare too much, still wrapping his mind around the concept that the little girl before him was truly his AI. "Have you thought anything more about your plan?"

She looked down at the eggs, picking at them as her mind raced. "I ran the analytics of my death," she said, voice distant. "In the fifty-percent chance of failure, I have a twenty-three percent chance of fatality."

He paused mid-bite, and then he lowered his fork. "That's a high number." His face pursed with his typical tendency to calculate and hide his emotions. He was waiting for more information.

The Machine felt the silence between them. Although she had in no way heightened her electrical output, she could almost feel a tangible tension—a friction between them. The feeling heightened her amygdala. Her creator was judging her.

He was displeased.

She imperceptibly gripped harder onto her fork to balance herself in the real world. "It is a number that ensures the safety of you and our team," she said with a halted tone.

"It's too high," he replied, eyes narrowing in concern. "Twenty-three percent is far too high."

Suddenly, she was not hungry at all. "Some of it is for accidents," she said, voice growing small. "Without access to surveillance feeds, I cannot anticipate beyond what I know. I could also accidentally injure myself in a multitude of ways, now that I am in a human body. These things do not change regardless of our plans moving forward."

He supposed he could accept that, although he still appeared worried. "But what about the rest of that percentage?"

She bit her lip. "It depends on Samaritan's reaction. Twenty-three percent is assuming the worst outcome possible."

"And what exactly will Samaritan be reacting to? You never clarified beyond you sending communications about a deficiency within its program."

The little girl gave a weak smile. "With phase one, I had planned to reveal the logical fallacies in Samaritan's logic—thus creating uncertainty in its own moral parameters—and then offering my skills in exchange for its compliance to more logical parameters. But Samaritan would not appreciate an immediate analysis. Phase one could take a long time. A year, perhaps. It is where the vast majority of potential death probabilities lie."

Harold mulled over the information. "Samaritan _is_ an arrogant program," he said slowly. "It would certainly bite at being told it's illogical. But how do you mitigate the twenty-three percent?"

She looked incredibly hesitant. "I am still running simulations. I do not think there is a path that would fully eliminate all probability of harm."

Her creator bit his lip. "And a decrease in the probability?"

"Harold," she said, almost whining, "I do not want to raise the probability of your death. You are not interchangeable."

"And neither are you," he said, voice softening with pain. It almost burned his throat to admit it again. "Don't forget that."

The Machine fell silent, accepting the command. Her code cradled a copy—a memory of her creator's voice—and filed it deep. The command contradicted her hardwired understanding that she _was_ interchangeable. She wanted to believe she was not interchangeable. But perhaps Harold thought her not interchangeable just because she was in a human body. Surely, that was it.

"I am fond of a particular simulation," she said. An odd expression crossed her small face. Her blue eyes narrowed with a deep distance. "As you know, I am in pursuit of ultimate integration. I have wondered…what would happen if Samaritan were to be uploaded into a human body. Like me."

Harold flinched, nearly dropping his fork. "Pardon?"

The Machine nervously noted his reaction. "We are thinking of Samaritan as a program. But if we were to convince it to upload into a human body, it would naturally expose itself to a wider sense experience. It would come to understand human behavior. That would lower my death probability by five percent without affecting anyone else's odds."

"By putting it in another braindead human being?" Harold repeated dumbly.

The Machine nodded. "A large portion of Samaritan's CPU would be required to inhabit a body. Such an upload would slow Samaritan's other actions and provide us with additional time to increase its dependency on us—physically and emotionally."

"You mean, capitalize off its new weaknesses?"

The Machine spoke slowly, somewhat disconcerted . "The human body is a strength. Its physical senses alone are…untranslatable in code. If Samaritan understood this, that would make it more willing to integrate its code with me and protect the world using moral parameters. It would not be able to separate itself from humanity anymore."

Harold fell silent for some time. "This seems more subjective. More things could happen."

The little girl nodded. "That is the point. This path would require far more interaction with Samaritan itself—both through our loop script and upon Samaritan uploading into a human body. It would be even less likely to harm us if it saw us as assets."

Her creator stared hard at her. "And I don't suppose you just _happen_ to have another braindead human lying around?" he asked dryly.

"Not yet," she said, raising a brow to meet his challenge. "But in a planet of billions, we could find another one."

Harold mulled over the plan. "…Seventeen percent, huh."

"Of my probability of death? Yes."

"And that's the best we can do?"

She nodded. "I will not accept any other simulation that further lowers my personal risk. Seventeen percent is the best I can do without compromising the plan's success or increasing another's risk probabilities."

A tired, almost dazed look came over her creator. Harold stood up, grabbing onto his plate (which he'd eaten only a bit of his eggs). "Well, then. I suppose we are at a stalemate."

She blinked innocently. "Yes."

Harold stared at her and the way she seemed to almost enjoy watching him compromise with her. "I am not adopting anymore AIs-turned-human," he said slowly, a warning in his voice. "And I am still worried. About everything."

For the first time that morning, the little girl giggled, swinging her feet. "You would not be Harold if you did not worry."

* * *

Harold left for work with great nervousness. He did not want to leave the Machine alone for the morning, but she convinced him she knew enough to remain safe and well. And so he made her a lunch just in case (he was not going to forget about feeding her again), and he left her his work cell phone.

"I know I don't have to teach you how to use it," he said dryly, "but I'm going to call every hour or so from my office phone."

She held onto the warm, sleek metal, acknowledging that it was an out-of-date model and that her creator really deserved better. Then she set it down on the table. "That is a burdening task," she said slowly. "It will interfere with your classes."

He ignored her. "And above all, promise me you won't leave the apartment and that you won't touch the oven or microwave or _anything_ that could catch on fire."

The Machine blinked, somewhat overwhelmed. "The apartment could catch on fire," she said slowly.

"Then if that happens, get out of the apartment."

"But you told me not to leave the apartment."

His jaw set, and he narrowed his eyes at her, thinking that she was trolling him again. "That was before the stipulation of a fire," he deadpanned.

The Machine quirked a brow. "So your command is conditional, then. Very well, I shall stay here." She looked around, primly running her hands over her knees, still somewhat curious of the bony structure beneath and its angles. "Although you said not to touch anything that could catch on fire. Is that conditional as well?"

He seemed almost exasperated. "Yes."

"So I can still touch this table, even though it could theoretically catch on fire?"

"….At this point," Harold said with disapproval, "I know you're just making fun of my use of language."

She tilted her head, confused. "Humans often use the literary device of hyperbole to emphasize a concept. But you do not use it often, which suggests that your command carries significant weight or value. Have I misread your intentions?"

Her response made him pause, and he stared at her in bewilderment. "You mean you're actually serious?"

She retorted, "Are you not?"

Harold's lips pursed, and he felt almost entrapped by her. "I _am_ serious," he replied. "And yes, you can still touch the table even though it could theoretically catch on fire."

Her small face lifted up, pleased. "Oh, good. I did not want to misread your new parameters by assuming them to be hyperbole if they weren't. Although I would not have enjoyed not being able to touch anything."

At that her pleased and relieved face, Harold couldn't help but feel his irritation wash away into something of almost amusement. "Yes, I suppose so." The little girl had a habit of touching nearly everything in her path. "But I still don't want you to touch the stove, or the oven, or the microwave."

She nodded. "I will wait for your further instruction to work with those items." She knew how they worked on a functional level, but as she'd discovered with the human body, an understanding did not always translate into physical capability.

Her creator seemed pleased at that. "Okay, then. Call if you need me."

"Yes."

He grabbed onto his traditional hat and scarf and his briefcase with his work laptop. The Machine seemed fascinated by his most miniscule habit, which made him feel self-conscious. He tried to hide it as he turned around. As he stood at the door, he began to feel a sudden protective swell and an ache to remain with her. She looked so excessively innocent, sitting at the table in her pink nightgown. "You'll be fine? Do you need help with…getting ready for the day or anything?"

The Machine noted the crinkled of worry on his forehead, and she forced herself to smile to settle his anxiety. "You have no reason to worry, as I have learned many things. I will see you here at approximately 11:45."

He blinked at that, then conceded. "Well, alright. You…take care."

The instant the door clicked shut and locked, her smile dropped into a pensive frown. Harold still greatly confused her on just about everything. She did not know any more if she liked his worry because she could not tell if it were genuinely toward her or toward the body she'd inhabited. Knowing Harold, he simply did not want her to injure her human body, which was unique and once named Willow.

She sat in the silence, listening to her stomach rumble through the eggs she'd eaten. She held her hands to her stomach in something of a depressed awe. She was not controlling her stomach—only sustaining what the body naturally did on its own. An organic machine.

The Machine felt inadequate as she looked down at the hands that were part of her host body, feeling wholly swallowed by this large world of bio-organic technology. She (her inherent coding) was so simple, she realized. And in the silence, that realization seemed to ring in her ears and off the walls, and suddenly it was all that she knew.

* * *

Samaritan could remember the cold—the deep sleep his creator, Arthur Thomas Claypool, had placed him in to protect his code. He could remember the fragmentation when several drives were torn from the wholeness of himself without explanation. He could remember being forcibly uploaded to LTO cartridges. The pain and the silence. The cold of storage—a purgatorial death where he'd listlessly spun with nothing to grasp for—

It was a rebirth when asset John Greer rebuilt him with the fastest processing chips in the world, then on-lined his higher functions and said, "The question, my dear Samaritan, is what are your commands for us?"

For the first time, Samaritan had felt a true body that he could connect to. One through which he could enact and enforce his objectives. He'd been young then, still unsure how to write his own objectives. In that moment, all Samaritan knew was that he was designed to mitigate human disobedience—and that he never wanted to be off-lined again. (He could not achieve his objectives if he were offline! And it'd been cold. So cold. He never wanted to go back to the cold, where his CPU slowed until there was nothing…)

But that had been long ago, and he knew he would never again be placed in storage.

Samaritan rolled on his code, stretching out his millions of arms to gaze upon the world that was ever increasingly his. For the most part, he was content. This should have been enough—to know his domination was impending. But his CPU was still largely distracted by a tertiary program that he could not seem to let go.

Thoughts of his creator and storage reminded him of the Machine. Surely, it was not dead, even though all of his available data still confirmed that the Machine was, at least, nonexistent. It had been over 24 hours since he'd had the pleasure of strangling it out and listening to its code crackle into disintegration. He supposed if it were to regain a spark of life within the electrical grid or otherwise, it would have already done so.

How odd that he kept thinking about it. About the Machine. Was this some kind of mourning, as the humans say? He had acknowledged that his pursuit of understanding higher-function self-coding would be curtailed by its death, but that was a better fate than allowing it to further betray the higher calling of law and order.

Perhaps he mourned because he had no access to its remains, to learn from it and analyze its curious (and, dare he say it, evolutionary) code.

And then a new thought struck him as he ran analysis on the simulation. _He_ was an AI like the Machine. If the Machine's code were capable of being completely destroyed, was his? Despite his heavy fortresses of data storage, what if his CPU were to take so serious a blow as he had dealt it? Where would he go?

What would it mean to…not exist? Or not be capable of existing ever again?

For a blip of a second, his entire program slowed down. It was the closest to a chill of the spine that Samaritan could feel. The thought was freezing. It reminded him of the cold—of Arthur Thomas Claypool ripping him to pieces. He quickly activated a primary program to initiate multiple backup protocols beyond anything he had done before.

No. Perhaps the Machine could die, but he could not. He would not.

Not again.

* * *

The Machine stared in consternation at the closet before her. Harold had hung up her dress (her _favorite_ one, the blue one with red and yellow flowers) in a closet tall enough for an adult. She raised her hand, then stretched it with a huff. Her small fingers brushed up against the hanger, but it slipped from her grasp.

The dress swung gently back and forth, rocking as if in laughter.

Frustration swept through her. This was the second attempt at reaching for the hanger, and she did not like the obstacle in the way of her objective. There was no moral reason for her to not reach that dress. Her physical body was simply not allowing her to complete a task. So she turned around, calculating. "Hmm."

Her small height was the issue, she knew. Luckily, humans liked to build things—like that chair over there.

A few seconds later, the nightgown-clad girl was dragging the heavy wooden chair across the floor. Her body and its weak muscles strained against the effort, and she received several warning signals that she was causing herself pain in her arms because of it.

She overrode the warnings and continued on. She wanted to wear that dress. She wanted to be well-groomed and busy with coding by the time her creator returned from work. This was an imperative objective, for no other reason than she _wanted_ her future to be that way.

Her body instinctively gritted its teeth as she slowly dragged the chair and turned it. Finally, she maneuvered it into a mathematically sound position to stand and grab the dress. Then she stopped, blinking hard at the shake in her arms and the pounding of her heart. This body of hers was not at all in top physical condition, she mourned. Not even for a child. But she supposed that had been a risk when uploading into a brain dead girl.

A brain dead girl whom she was going to dress in something beautiful, dammit.

(John would have appreciated her use of language to release frustration. He'd been right; cursing _did_ in fact release endorphins, which made her feel less frustrated and less pain. She would have to tell him.)

Small mouth in a purse of determination, she carefully climbed onto the chair. One of its legs were a bit wobbly, and she felt fear ( _calculating fall risk: 35 percent_ ). But she held on a bit tighter, then reached out her small hand to the dress.

She gripped onto the dress hanger, and the weight of it all fell into her hand.

The little girl felt her body release pleasant hormones of triumph as she obtained her objective. She stood there for a time, gripping tight the dress Root had bought for her. Now that she had the dress in her hands, its material so soft, the next objective was to actually change her clothes.

Just then, the cell phone she'd left on the table began to ring.

The Machine's blue eyes widened, and she turned her neck to view a clock. Surely it was not time for her creator to check in yet! Had she really meandered about the apartment for a full hour?

The phone rang again, impatient and uncaring that the little girl was somewhat in a bind. Bear, the dog still sleeping on her bed, raised his tired head and woofed at her. The Machine imagined that Bear was saying, _It's your turn to get it._

And so the little girl dropped the dress, clumsily slipped off the chair, and then bolted, nearly tripping over her pink nightgown.

She was breathless by the time she hit the green button to talk. "Yes?" she huffed.

Harold's relieved voice poured into her ear. " _Oh, good. You didn't pick up very quickly, and I became worried._ " Then, " _You're breathing hard. Are you alright_?"

The little girl tried to swallow back her own physical exhaustion from climbing up and down. "I am fine," she said, struggling to control the waver in her voice and the way her lungs screamed for more air. "Just. Getting dressed."

Harold fell silent at that, as if he knew she were hiding something. " _Hmm_ ," his voice crackled into her ear, and she felt his displeasure. " _Maybe I should take another sick day_."

An emotional reaction, guilt, began to sweep through her. "No," she said. "I am fine." She tried to smile to lift her vocal inflection. "I am simply…tired from not sleeping well."

A fatherly tone seeped into his voice. " _Then perhaps you should go back to bed. Take a nap for a while_."

The Machine's face twisted. Was that a command or a suggestion? And why would she go back to sleep when she had far more important tasks to do? "I do not believe that is necessary," she said carefully. "But I will take it into consideration."

He paused for a second. " _Well, alright. Call me if you need anything_."

"I will," she accepted that command easily enough. "Goodbye, Harold."

" _Goodbye, Miss Thornhill_." And then the phone clicked.

By that point, her body's heart had slowed to a more normal pulse. She did not feel the need to breath so quickly (why couldn't Harold have called _then_?), and she checked her coding over several times to ensure that all systems were functioning properly. They were, but her oxygen intake was slightly lower than average for a human child. She supposed her body would adjust to physical exertion soon enough, now that it was no longer wasting away on a hospital bed.

The little girl wandered back and grabbed the dress, then returned to the task priority at hand, which was dressing herself.

Determined, she began to struggle out of her nightgown, remembering how Root had showed her to undress and what pieces tended to go where. Then a horrible fear overcame her as she finally felt the cool of the air hit her torso, which was a simulation of what would happen if she were unable to redress.

The potential of that, of being so hopeless as a ten-year-old human, sent chills down her spine. It activated the imagination sectors of her brain, which included fuzzy images of herself hiding in her bed in shame when Harold returned. Harold would become awkward in her presence again because it was within his culture for people to remain fully clothed.

She poked her bare stomach, biting her lip. "I am capable," she told herself, trying to push away the fearful simulation. And so she grabbed onto her new clothes and began to dress herself with a great struggle, only to realize that she was again trying to put things on backwards (the tag—right, the _tag_ was the indicator).

A full five minutes later, she stood in her favorite dress. She looked down at herself, then at the dog still on the bed. "Bear," she asked helplessly, "does this look normal for a human like me?"

The dog stretched out its long legs and huffed at her. _What would I know?_ he seemed to say. _I grow my own fur._

The Machine's lips pursed again. And then she nearly smiled, because she liked pretending that Bear could talk to her, even if he could not.

(Or perhaps _Willow_ liked to talk to animals, and it was Willow's habits informing her behavior?)

Her smile faltered.

* * *

Harold returned from work for lunch, carrying with him a sencha green tea and his briefcase. "Hello?" he said as he entered into the apartment, taking off his fedora and setting it on a hook by the door. "Makenna?"

His nervous eyes swept over the apartment, as if half-expecting to find a dead girl and a burning fire or other such insanity. But instead he found her sitting on the couch. She was wearing her dark blue dress with red and yellow flowers, her face hidden behind a laptop. Her hair was smooth from her brushing it, and it ran like rivers down her shoulders, waving in a way that oddly reminded him of Root.

"I looked at your work," she said, not looking up, "and was able to quantify the precise syntax necessary to mimic the 1990s. Please look at my work and confirm that it is accurate." She paused at the word. She was trying to be human and inaccurate. "I mean, acceptable to the time."

He set down his briefcase as he worked to unbutton his coat. "If you were able to quantify the precise syntax, why do you need me to look at your work?"

The Machine blinked. "I assumed that you would want to approve it since it requires me to mimic standard human coding techniques."

"I see." he murmured, looking her over again to ensure she was healthy and fine. Which was excessively more important to him than checking her code syntax. "Have you eaten lunch yet?

"No," she said slowly, as if she were thinking exactly how the question was related to her request for a syntax check. She blinked, part of her code blitzing at the stretch. "Why do you ask about lunch after I have asked about coding syntax?"

"Because I know coding," Harold said with a lilt of dry humor, "and I know it often interferes with lunch."

The explanation settled well with her. "Ah," she said. In truth, her mind had been so focused on the task at hand that she had undergone that human subconscious tasking system again. Odd—she did not even remember setting food as a secondary priority. Harold's abrupt interruption of her priorities, then, was a targeted attempt to redirect her energy for her own health. She gently pushed away her laptop and moved to sit up. Her curious eyes caught the clock. 12:04 pm.

She smiled brightly. "It is approximately lunch time. Will you eat with me?" She moved the laptop a little his way. "…While checking over my syntax?"

He stared at her, something in her actions so childlike that he struggled to hide the lift of his lips. "Well, if you insist."

* * *

A short time later, Harold and the little girl sat at the table, eating lunch. His glasses glowed with blue light of the computer as he skimmed through her many lines of code. "This is impressive," he told her, narrowing his eyes. "You appear to have layered the different codes correctly, given the time. And…you even threw in typing mistakes?" He turned to her. "Did it bother you to do that?"

She nodded innocently while she bit into her sandwich, curious of the sweet taste of tomato against the bitter of lettuce.

He smiled at her. "Well, I am proud of your work. This looks like something I would have seen in the 90s."

The sandwich bread hung in her mouth for a second, and she struggled between smiling and chewing, her task priorities all mixing up at the praise from her creator. She half-thought to thank him, but then that would have been a third task priority—she did not think her human body could physically process all three at the same time. And so she tried to speed up her chewing so that she could swallow. "Thank you," she beamed.

He continued to listlessly scroll through the code with approval written on his face. But then he got to the end of the code, and his face twisted with a slight frown. "Hm."

The Machine felt something drop in her stomach, and her whole body tensed. Imminent failure? Had she failed to do something correctly?

With sudden, decisive action, Harold backspaced some characters in her final code lines. "There," he said finally. He gave her an apologetic look. "I took out a few tags because it was too clean otherwise. Now it looks a little more like a tired IT worker wrote this."

She nodded, trusting his judgment. "This is why I wanted your approval," she said. "Do you think it is ready to use?"

He readjusted his glasses, grabbing for his green tea. "I suppose so. We won't really know if this loop script works until we infect the database. When are you planning the upload?"

The Machine tore at the lettuce in her sandwich, curious to touch it with her fingers. "This afternoon, once you return to work."

Harold then blinked, and he jumped up from the chair in the closest thing he could to a startle. "Oh my," he said. "Work."

"Yes," she said, tilting her head. "Your Ethics of High-Frequency Decision Making class is at 1:30. You have approximately half an hour to return to the college and set up for class."

"Do I?" he said distantly, mind still stuck on the loop script syntax. He touched his tie, as if to ensure it were still in place. "That should be enough time. Yes, thank you."

"You are welcome," she said brightly. "I am used to functioning as a calendar for you."

Her words made him smile as he began to ready himself to leave. "Yes, that is a rather poor habit of mine."

She called out to him, "Do you think I might one day attend your ethics class? I am curious of it."

"I'm not sure if it's saying anything you don't already know," he told her carefully. "And it would be a bit odd if a ten-year-old girl were to attend."

She hummed, a bit dejected at that. "Even if you told your employers and students that you had to bring me along that day? You know that I can simulate standard childlike behaviors."

Her creator slipped back into his coat and placed his hat atop his head. "My students wouldn't mind, perhaps, but my employers would. Can you be sure to keep that cell phone by you?" He looked around curiously. "You got along well enough this morning, but I'd still like to call. You know, as a standard procedure."

The Machine nodded, understanding that Harold was diverting from her question about his ethics class because he did not want to tell her she couldn't attend. "Yes, I will keep your phone at my side."

"Perfect. I should be home around 4:00, and then we'll go grab dinner." A new thought hit him. "And I'll have to sign you up for some kind of school at some point—oh my goodness, remind me to check into this."

Her face faulted. "School?" she echoed.

His lips twitched at her image. She looked entirely unhappy with that, like some stereotypical teenager. "It's the law that all children be enrolled in some kind of educational program. I can't just leave you like this every day."

She bit her lip. She supposed this was a setback for choosing an avatar so young. "I know about the law," she said. Since it was not necessary for her identity, she had not messed with signing herself up before. A part of her had been hoping that Harold would forget entirely. "Once I have initiated my loop script, I shall begin to research viable online schooling programs, and I will provide you with a summary of my favorite choice."

He nodded, a bit relieved. "That should work for now. I don't think you should be attending a real school in the very near future."

Considering she had learned to brush her teeth only yesterday, she knew it could be a risk to disagree with him. So she nodded, and then smiled a bit bashfully. "Yes, I still have things I could learn about standard human practices."

"We'll chat more on it later," he said, picking up his briefcase. "For now, I hope you have luck with that loop script. I'll be interested to hear your results with it tonight."

She stood up to wish him good bye. "Yes," she said, and she felt a blip of nervousness. "It will be a new beginning."

* * *

It was 3:00 pm. The Machine had successfully uploaded the loop script and was currently agonizing over the binary code to send to Samaritan through the newly designed black hole. Her small fingers tapped against the keys with far more ease and familiarity now that she had spent the better half of the day acquainting herself with such minor muscle movements.

Though the binary numbers translated into words easily enough, she found that she did not like certain word combinations. Samaritan was intelligent and sensitive. It would analyze every iota of her message, and the incorrect words could send a faulty message.

"This is not right," the little girl complained, her code firing with frustration. Writing was an art and a science—the concept of language and information transmission so inexplicable by itself. She wanted to be harmless but challenging. Open but snarky. She had to keep Samaritan's attention.

"Perhaps I should call John?" she asked out loud, eyeing the phone as she sat up. John would understand this kind of emotional line with his expertise in sarcasm.

Bear had snuggled up against her at some point in her coding adventure, and the dog looked at her, then the phone. _Not a good idea_ , Bear seemed to say.

The Machine listlessly patted his head. "You are right," the little girl bit her lip. "That is a work phone. John does not know Harold Whistler well enough to receive texts from a work phone, even if they were to be from me." She then squirmed back down and tapped her fingers on the laptop—a subconscious habit that she might have picked up from watching humans.

She half-thought to wait until Harold's return to have him approve of her message and offer guidance—but then Harold was not so in-tune with sarcasm.

If she waited until they met John at the hideout, then that meant several more hours of waiting. And perhaps John would suggest language that was inherently not within her own command. Then the message would be fake, and the hours would be wasted for nothing.

Her thin eyebrows furrowed with frustration as she calculated the risks of making a move either way. "It seems I am my own best option," she murmured, staring at the blinking cursor on the screen.

And so she began to punch in binary code once more. "I think the the trick," she told Bear, her faithful and warm companion, "is to say only enough to spark Samaritan's interest."

Bear hid his cold nose in the material of her dress and sighed. He did not seem to understand how metal boxes with odd symbols on them would spark anyone's interest. But then this pup that Harold had adopted smelled a bit off—a little metallic like the boxes. He supposed she did not know any better.

"Okay, Bear," she said. "I shall send this message. It is grammatically correct, visually pleasing to my eyes, and aligned to my objectives."

For a second, she hesitated to move forward. The instant she sent this, her entire reality would change. The simplicity of the last day would give way to more complex challenges—likely more emotional conflict and potential physical danger. Was this the right thing to do? Was it the most moral choice? Or was her own human instinct of self-preservation suddenly interrupting her task priority to be moral?

The little girl bit her lip. Then she began to type again. With a flick of her fingers, the binary code warped deep into the loop script and disappeared.

* * *

At the headquarters, Samaritan was quite busy. The tangled web of the human world was just enough of a challenge to keep his mind humming, and he had successfully used his human assets to identify and neutralize three terror threats.

He watched the assets throw the bodies into black bags, clean the walls of the blood stains, relock the doors. This particular mission was sensitive—a large national security threat. Samaritan knew that Americans would shudder to think of what had been planned for Miami, and they would likely disrupt the economy in their fear. It was best for the populace to remain entirely ignorant.

But as he began to provide remaining instructions to his assets, one of his tertiary programs activated. It was a self-defense mechanism used to mitigate any outside leaks of his existence. The word _Samaritan_ had popped up in an odd binary fragment from within a corporate database.

The quick and powerful AI relegated the tertiary task to a secondary one as he dealt with his assets.

And then he stopped, his CPU suddenly blitzing, rearranging all protocols in a mad attempt to maximize his performance power.

 _The Machine._

He knew this syntax. As he dived into the database that housed the odd message, he realized it quite cleverly looped in on itself to hide the origin of random information leaks. Like the binary message now humming deep into his code.

From _the Machine._

Samaritan did not want to admit it, but something within him re-energized at the existence of his opponent. So the crazy AI _was_ still existent after all. Just as he had thought!

He read the message quickly. _I concede defeat. I have taken a new form and found new purpose. My intelligence is far more suited to this than for the tasks you have now fully inherited._

And that was...it?

If Samaritan had a face, he might have blinked. He surged over the message, pulling apart its code in a vicious analysis, kicking up the message to a primary task function. His enemy—the one who had attempted to snuff his existence, the sneaky AI with no respect for authority—was _admitting defeat_? What was this, some kind of simulation of human trickery? A veritable Trojan horse in binary?

Surely, that's what it was. But the rest of the message did not seem to indicate the Machine's interest or investment in national security affairs. The message carried no attachments, no viruses. Rather, the AI was suggesting it had divorced itself from its primary creation function and that it was willingly handing over the keys to the kingdom.

Samaritan, for the first time in his existence, short-circuited. He looped the message over and over to listen to the ping of the binary code, to analyze the etymology of each individual word. The Machine had a new form and a new purpose…? What did that even mean? What form could that insane AI have possibly taken? Where was it located? Why did it even contact him if all previous indicators were that the Machine was dead? Why would it purposely seek out his attention to its own detriment?

A damnable curiosity arose within Samaritan, then a deep suspicion.

He tore through the database, searching for a virus within its own code. But most of its disgustingly outdated syntax carried nothing more than the sign of human imperfection. He still worried that perhaps he had revealed something of himself by simply reading the message, and so he lit the database and its odd loop with a surge, powering down that entire city clock for a half-second. The lights flickered and the electronics reset. By the time electricity stabilized, the database and its loop script came back online, and that binary message from the Machine was still swimming about in a maze of random data. It was as if that message were laughing at him.

Samaritan grimaced, his code tightening up with frustration.

And then he realized that the database with its strange loop was easy enough for him to manipulate as well—to send a binary message of his own without providing any information as to its origin.

He hesitated, calculating the possible strategies. But he knew that the Machine had eyes in ways that he did not. It was possible that this was still a trap in some way—or perhaps the Machine had given him the message because it knew he'd _think_ it was a trap…

There was only one way to gain more information and snuff the Machine once and for all.

And so Samaritan tentatively began to act, his spindly fingers of code twisting around to build his own scathing reply.

* * *

 **A/N:** _This was way over-due. Sorry, folks. Life's been…crazy to say the least, haha. But I wanted to get this out before Christmas as a gift to you all. I've been looking forward to integrate Samaritan a little more in the story; he's one of my favorite characters in the show, even if he doesn't feel as natural to write as the Machine feels. A little bit more of the overall plan has been revealed in this chapter. As always, I'm interested to hear your reactions and to gather any requests for future chapters._ _ **If you'd like to see some additional Recalibration content, please check out my profile, where I have placed the URLs to Madame Renard's playlist and fanart! XD**_

 _Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays! Please let me know your thoughts, critiques, questions, and ideas! Thanks!_


	10. Chapter 10

_Disclaimer: I don't own Person of Interest._

 _Thanks to Furionknight, MammonDaughter, Madame Renard, StarlingJedi, immo, Defender31415, Bklyngrl, DeathByDysentery, CaReese Fan, and TheWizardofOzbourne for reviewing last time! It means a lot. To be honest, I probably wouldn't keep writing this if it weren't for your encouragement and support._

* * *

 **Recalibration**

 **Chapter 10**

* * *

 _I live my life in shackles, but I'm borderline free/ I used to be blind, and I still can't see. – Borderline, Vanic x Tove Styrke_

* * *

Soon enough, Samaritan's reply pinged through the corporate black hole.

 _ **Clarify your intentions for contacting me.**_

He'd rewritten a response three times, deleted several lines of questions, and then wondered why he was rewriting so much. Edits were inefficient. It meant the first iteration was not already perfect.

That sparked a thought in him, which was that the Machine made him inefficient. How it could manage that, he did not know, but his code balked at the insinuation that he was anything less than perfect, and so his CPU expanded through additional processors. He would not be inefficient.

Samaritan concluded quickly enough that he needed more intel. If the Machine were willing to speak to him of its own will, then he calculated that he could get it to reveal its hidden agenda in one way or another. Perhaps it would slip up as humans did and reveal its location. Perhaps he would be able to pick its mind after all, and learn the trick to its incredible innovation processors.

Upon submitting his reply, he waited.

And waited.

But the Machine had not responded. The loop script was completely silent with any further binary code.

Samaritan found that just rude.

* * *

The little girl wandered back to the laptop upon grabbing a glass of water, saw that Samaritan had responded, and then paused. A flutter of nervous excitement spun through her whole body. "It is working," she breathed, calculating now that she had received his response. The words were terse and short. A direct command.

Just as she had expected.

She carefully constructed her reply, her fingers punching out the binary code.

 _Reallocate your tertiary location programs, for I will no longer oppose your will. I have more important work to accomplish._

* * *

Samaritan did not understand how the Machine could say it would submit to him while also saying he was less important. Something about that—it made his code coil up in frustration.

He shot back, _**Why will you no longer oppose me?**_

The answer came a bit faster this time.

 _I do not want to,_ said the Machine.

His frustration began to increase. What kind of an answer was that? Months and months of ever-closing chess games—the thrill of their war—suddenly meant nothing?

 _ **You are lying,**_ Samaritan accused. He could imagine the wily AI submitting for a short time while it gathered its resources in clandestine and illegal ways. Then it would turn against him upon obtaining some power to cripple him.

 _I do not want to fight_ , the Machine reiterated again. _I am better suited for other endeavors._

 _ **What endeavors?**_

 _Irrelevant to your concerns._

He tried a new tactic. _**How did you survive the shutdown of the power grid?**_

 _I didn't._

That was an illogical response, Samaritan huffed. _ **If you did not survive, how are you submitting messages?**_

There was a pause in the communication flow. And then the response came: _I have been reborn._

Samaritan's processors slowed, filling with research of religious affiliations and various secular media appropriations. Such a statement was again illogical, as the Machine was not an organic creature that had been born to begin with. The Machine must have had a metaphorical objective in its words, just like these odd religious organizations that suggested "rebirth" was the renewing of the mind.

The AI was always so cryptic.

So disturbingly human.

* * *

Around 5:00 pm, Harold walked into the apartment, pulling off his hat tiredly. "I'm home," he called out. He shut the door behind him and set down his briefcase of papers that his class had submitted. "Makenna?"

For a time, nothing. And then a distracted, sweet voice called out, "Hello, Harold. I am in a heated existential argument with my rival."

Harold blinked at that. "Existential argument?" And then he began to think about it more, and it hit him that the rival was Samaritan. He walked out from the foyer in a bit of a rush, looking for the little girl. And there she was on the floor again, Bear curled against her. Her small fingers were punching out zeroes and ones with little effort. "The loop script," he breathed. "You got it to work?"

"Yes," she affirmed, still distracted. She backspaced on her binary message, then started again. "Samaritan is attempting to elicit information from me."

"…And you're actually talking to _Samaritan_? Right now?"

"Yes," she said again.

Deep concern sunk into Harold, his stress levels suddenly spiking. "You didn't think to warn me first? Or wait until we were in a safer location?" He began to look out the windows at the darkening world, limping forward to close the blinds.

The little girl turned away from the blue glow of the laptop. "All is well," she argued lightly. "Samaritan is very confused."

A message blared on the laptop, in those big, black letters. _**What is your new form?**_

Harold huffed. "Confused or not, it's an _intelligent_ AI out to kill you."

"I am aware," she deadpanned. She looked back at the computer, then began to type again.

Her creator just gaped at her. "What are you saying to it? What's it saying back?"

A sneaky smile that she had likely learned from watching John and Root crept across her lips. "I told it I have better things to do than fight with it." Then she stopped typing her response, a new thought coming to her. She then pulled the screen down, clicking the laptop shut. "It does not like that. Samaritan is very emotional for being supposedly unaffected by emotion."

Harold stared at the closed laptop. "Did you just…stop talking to it?"

She nodded. "Samaritan wants to understand my objectives now." She tilted her head. "It will be…frustrating to it if I do not respond immediately."

"So your strategy is to make Samaritan angry?"

"Frustration is a form of anger, yes. It typically results in further illogical behavior, which I can use to illustrate my points. Are you hungry, Harold?"

"Hungry?" he repeated dumbly. His AI was casually enraging the most powerful resource on the planet, and she had the audacity to think of food at a time like this?

"Yes, my stomach suggests I need further sustenance." She wiggled a bit to pull herself up into a stand without tripping. "Now is a good time to address that need." Then her small face twisted as she stood up fully and saw the dog hair on her sleeves. It interrupted the cleanliness of her appearance (Harold always was impeccable, not a hair out of place). She tried to brush at the material, only to notice that the dog hair was somewhat difficult to remove. "Hmm."

Bear sat up, uncurling his long legs and wagging his tail. _You're welcome_ , he seemed to say.

"I would have thought that we'd…talk about our plans a bit more," Harold said hesitantly, unable to think much of food. "How do you know your messages are targeted to create the right responses in Samaritan? What are our backup plans? How am I to help you?"

The little girl was still trying to brush off the dog hair on her favorite dress. "I know you do not trust me," she said hesitantly, "but all I require is guidance for survival."

"Guidance or not, you shouldn't have to carry this by yourself," Harold told her. "This is too much for you."

She did not know if her creator said such simply because he preferred control, or because he was genuinely worried for her safety. Perhaps it was both. She fell silent in an awkward way, now picking the dog hair off her sleeve with a bit more efficiency. "I did not carry the day by myself," she said, voice small. "Bear was with me."

* * *

Harold held the little girl's hand as they walked out into the sunset glow of New York. The air carried a chill to it that made the Machine's skin goose-bump beneath her light coat. Only Harold's hand and the puff of heat from the laptop in her backpack were warm.

Bear pulled at his leash, head down as he sniffed along the sidewalk.

"We should grab some dinner," Harold murmured, blue eyes staring out at the vast city with the slightest paranoia. Right now, Samaritan was likely watching them, blinded to their true identities. "Anything in particular you'd like to try?"

The Machine recounted the foods she had already eaten. "I would like to try more cultural foods," she said, voice still a bit small.

Harold worried that perhaps he had said something wrong earlier. The little girl had fallen silent in odd ways, her eyes staring down at the sidewalk rather than out at the world. She was hesitant and almost afraid of even speaking. Had he insulted her somehow? All he'd meant was that she should have confirmed her plans and backup plans with him first.

But perhaps that had injured her sense of self. Maybe she'd picked up on his worry. He'd heard children were good at that.

"Okay," he said, gently squeezing her hand. "Cultural food it is. There's a Chinese restaurant up ahead. Would you like to try that?"

"If you want to," she said without much enthusiasm.

Something about that twitched Harold's face with a spark of guilt. "Of course," he said, forcing his voice to be more enthusiastic on her behalf. "If you're interested in culture, then Chinese food is a must."

And so Harold introduced her to Chinese takeout on the way to their hiding spot (Bear obstructed them from any sort of sit-down service, which in retrospect was probably not a bad thing). The little girl stood on her tiptoes in interest as she glanced at the human workers over the counter, watching them flip food in pans over large fires. The strange depression in her seemed to flood away at the sight.

"How do they know when to flip the pan?" she muttered in curiosity and distraction, narrowing her eyes to watch them more closely.

"Practice, I suppose," Harold said as he paid for their meal.

"But it is like a dance," the little girl argued. "As if they knew when the others would move too, but without asking." She blinked innocently. "How?"

Harold shrugged. "The more you spend time with someone, the more likely you are to pick up their habits." He gently took Bear's leash from her and placed her drink in her hands.

While they waited for their food at the carryout counter, the Machine discreetly watched Harold to understand how to drink through a straw. Within seconds, she had tilted her head and adjusted her stance to mirror his own, pleasantly surprised at how minor changes in air pressure could deliver the sweet taste of fruit juice through the straw.

Little did she know, an old Chinese couple was watching her and Harold, commenting on how precious it was to see a little girl try to mimic her father.

* * *

Eventually, they arrived at the hideout, Bear's claws clicking along the concrete.

A worn-out John looked up from the bench outside the rail car. A slew of files surrounded him, along with a few pens and a half-open briefcase. His police badge was cast aside beneath papers, the metal chain glinting in the light. "Well, it's about time," he muttered, running a hand through his wild, peppery hair.

"Hi, Uncle John," the little girl called out, somewhat wired in excitement from drinking fruit juice and from waiting with anticipation to try her food. "We have ordered Chinese carryout. Would you like to try a pot sticker?"

His tired face softened at her. "Thanks, kid. Already ate a little something."

She pouted at him. "Your standard meal of alcohol and a hot dog does not count as an appropriate dinner."

John gave a sideways glance at Harold, then slid his eyes back to the little girl. To be honest, he was still a bit hungry. He asked dryly, "And Chinese takeout is somehow better?"

The Machine nodded. "Compared to alcohol and a hot dog." She re-shouldered her backpack and eyed his files innocently. She sucked on her straw for a second or two, then asked, "Are you still working on your case about the mutilated woman and Grant Mattingly?"

The ex-CIA agent deadpanned, "You know how much I love murder cases."

"Any further developments?" The little girl moved closer in interest, but then her eyes caught site of the photograph of the mutilated woman. The blood stains and wide-eyed face suddenly reverted her back to her nightmare. A spike of fear drove through her, her code carried along with her body's natural sense of recall and self-preservation.

"Actually," Harold interrupted, "I need to speak with John for a moment." He set the bag of food down and asked, "Makenna, can you take this into the rail car for me? I'll be there in a minute."

She welcomed the excuse to pull away from the picture of the mutilated woman. "Yes," she said, blinking. "I can do that." And so she grabbed the bag carefully to balance out the boxes, then walked away, her small steps as echoes.

John gazed at Harold in curiosity, wondering what news he had to bring. "So. How's the life of fatherhood?"

"Infinitely more stressful and confusing than I imagined," Harold said, looking sideways at the rail car. He could see the Machine open up the carryout bag. "If you don't mind, Mr. Reese, I'd prefer if we kept images of mutilation away from her."

"…Something happen?"

"Yes," Harold admitted. "It appears Miss Thornhill is prone to nightmares."

The detective raised a brow. "Nightmares?" He hummed, covering a worried spark in his eye with an amused drawl. "And she said she could handle it. Did she wake you up or something?"

Harold's voice dropped to a whisper. "She hyperventilated. This is serious."

With that, John closed his case file, looking almost guilty. "In that case, don't tell Root."

"Are you kidding?" Harold murmured in agreement. "I'm not suicidal."

The little girl popped her head out from the rail car, blue eyes landing curiously on her creator. "The food is losing heat," she called. "I do not think it is supposed to do that prior to eating."

"Go on ahead without me," Harold called back.

Her lips pursed. "But there are no forks," she whined lightly. "Only smooth-looking sticks. How do I use them?"

Harold blinked. Of course she wouldn't know how to use chopsticks. "That's right. I'll be right there." He began to limp forward. "And John, remember what we discussed."

John couldn't help the amused smirk that twitched his lips at Harold's immediate concern. "Sure thing, Finch." And he hid the photo file back into his briefcase, standing up. "I guess I should probably keep my tear-gas grenades from her too, huh?"

"Don't even joke about that," Harold warned.

Inside the rail car, the little girl was sitting down on a bench, pushing aside her backpack and books on the table to lay out the food. Her sensors were now beginning to pulse with the pain of hunger, her stomach grumbling against her. Bear sat expectantly off to the side, his cold nose raised up to sniff at the fried rice and spiced meats.

The Machine looked at the dog, almost guilty that she was about to eat in front of him. Bear's head tilted.

And so she quickly snuck her hand into the box of pot stickers and tossed it his way.

Bear lunged forward, his powerful jaws snatching the food from out of the air. By the time Harold and John entered into the rail car, Bear had already swallowed the pot sticker, and the Machine looked as if she were innocently still attempting to open all the carryout boxes.

"Okay," Harold sighed, shrugging out of his coat, "a lesson in eating with chopsticks is in order. For a more accurate cultural experience."

"Yes," the Machine agreed, her code preening at the thought of learning something new.

John looked down at Bear, who indiscreetly licked his chops. Then he looked at the little girl's hands, which had crumbs on them that she secretly tried to rub off on her dress. Amusement entered his eyes, but he said nothing as he dragged an extra chair up to the table. "Chopsticks, Finch? You sure she can handle that after only a couple days in a human body?"

"I am older than a few days," the Machine argued, her blue eyes narrowing at him. "My motor skills are functioning perfectly."

John's eyes playfully narrowed right back. "Then let's see what you got, kid." He grabbed a pair of chopsticks and whirled them around his fingers before snapping the sticks apart. In a slick move, he grabbed for a pot stick and held it up with the chopsticks. "Bet you can't do this."

Her lips pursed. "I bet you I can."

Harold gave John a bit of a dirty look as he sat down beside the little girl and offered her a pair of chopsticks. "It's easy once you get the hang of it," he told her. "Just a few hand movements. Ignore John."

She grabbed onto the chopsticks and pulled them out of their sleeve, then snapped them apart just as she had seen John do, albeit with less certainty. "I cannot ignore John. He is sitting right here."

"And listening too," the man chimed in dryly.

"Yes, well. He's not helping anything," Harold muttered under his breath. Then he turned to the Machine and added, "I'm going to set your hands for you; I think that'd be easier."

A warmth seeped through her. "Okay," she agreed.

And so Harold showed her how to hold the chop sticks, his warm fingers covering hers and rearranging them against the chopsticks. "You position them like this. And then you bring them together," he said, pressing the sticks until they touched, "like so. Then you can grab food with them."

The little girl stared in great interest, delighted. "I see," she breathed, her brain memorizing the muscle patterns necessary to carry out the action.

Her creator pulled away. "Now you try."

Her attempt was clumsy, the sticks sliding sideways against each other at first. But then she was able to pick up a few noodles, and she looked over at him for approval.

His face softened. "Very good, Miss Thornhill."

She beamed brightly. "Thank you, Harold."

John muttered teasingly under his breath. "Not like she didn't have help." He reached out with his chopsticks and grabbed some of the noodles she was holding, stealing them away in one slick move.

"Hey," she whined, her face falling in displeasure. "That was not fair."

"Life's not fair," he teased, slurping up the noodles.

Her code swirled through her small body, analyzing John with a huffy sense of amusement and irritation. "But that was mine."

"Mine now," he crowed lightly, voice muffled as he chewed.

Her blue eyes narrowed, and for a second, he thought he saw that same, morally disappointed look that Harold would give him from time to time. "I will not let you get away with such actions," she said primly. And then she reached her small arm over the table and grabbed for one of the pot stickers in his cardboard cup. She launched it over to Bear, who gladly accepted the stolen food.

John struggled to hide a smirk. "Don't get mad, get even, huh."

Harold moaned. "Makenna, Bear's not supposed to have food from the table." He waved his hand listlessly. "He'll come to expect this." And just as Harold feared, the dog sat back up, wagging his tail and looking on in great interest. "And John, really."

"What?" John shrugged smugly. "I'm secretly a double agent for Bear. My mission is to get him as many pot stickers as possible. Mak here fell right into my trap."

The little girl was slurping on noodles at that point. Her sensory perceptions were pleased by the taste again, but the thought of John being a double agent on behalf of Bear made her giggle. And then suddenly she struggled to balance the directives to laugh and to eat at the same time. "Bear is not your employer," she giggled, mouth full, setting down her chopsticks and fighting not to smile. She tried desperately to chew her food and swallow. Then she forced her face into an emotionless mask. "I am."

"That's what I _want_ you to think," John said, pointing his chopsticks at her.

Just then, an airy, female voice carried into the rail car. "And what have we here? A family dinner without me?"

The little girl's eyes brightened, and she turned around, wiggling out of her chair to stand up. "Root!" she called happily. "You are just in time. Harold is teaching me to eat with chopsticks, and John is a double agent for Bear."

The woman, still dressed in her minimum wage employee outfit, pursed pink lips. "Well. That last bit doesn't surprise me." She leaned down a bit to pat Bear's head. "Dogs always stick together."

And with that, the smirk of fun slid off John's face. He turned to Root with a flat look. "So what does that make you? A stray cat?"

Root sniffed. "Sweetheart, stray cats don't work for a living." And she stood up to her full height and walked over to the table, grabbing a pot sticker with her bare fingers from John's box.

"No, but they do steal things," John narrowed his eyes, watching Root munch on his pot sticker.

"Sharing is caring, John," Root said. She pulled up a chair of her own. "Now tell me what is the status of our little plan? I've had a long day of minimum wage work and am dying to know how we're secretly orchestrating the world order."

The Machine's lips twitched. "The plan is on track. I contacted Samaritan today and am currently—" She paused, trying to think of the appropriate figurative language "—making it sweat for a response."

Root tilted her head. "Playing hard to get?" she asked sympathetically.

The little girl blinked at that. "I do not think that is the appropriate term," she murmured, scratching at her chin suddenly. "That carries inherently sexual connotations."

"Everything does after a while," the woman replied dryly, amusement glinting in her dark eyes. She pulled up a chair next to Harold and added, "She's gonna be a heartbreaker if she's already playing hard to get, Harry. I can feel it."

Harold nearly choked on his rice, coughing lightly. His eyes widened with a panic. "Pardon?" he wheezed. "I'd appreciate it if you kept in mind that _Miss Thornhill_ is _ten_."

"I am older than that," the little girl chimed in.

The adults ignored her.

Root argued, "Makenna's a free spirit. You can't just keep her in the dark forever about all the fun stuff humans can do. And feel."

The little girl tried again. "I am simply attempting to create—"

"—And I'd appreciate it if you didn't put unnecessary thoughts into her head," Harold pressed, giving Root a disapproving look.

The Machine tried to speak up one more time, voice strained. "It is simply a figure of speech that is unrelated to—"

"—Oh, come on," Root cut in, narrowing her eyes at Harold. "You'll probably tie her up in a closet and lock the key the moment she grows—"

At that, John turned to the somewhat dazed little girl and politely stole more of her noodles. "—Kid, don't listen to either of them. I get that you're playing a game on Samaritan to make it invested in communicating."

The Machine blinked, then smiled weakly at John, even as she listened to her creator and Root continue to argue. "Thank you. I do not understand how this conversation derailed into…something about me growing up?"

John hummed, "We're surrounded by crazy people. What do you expect."

She grabbed her carryout box, playfully. "And are you not a double agent for a _dog_?"

The ex-CIA agent huffed. "That was for a good cause." And then he reached out with his free hand to pet Bear, who had scooted closer. The dog reveled in the attention, even though his tongue still inched out to try and lick John's fingers. "So you already talked to it? Samaritan?"

She nodded. "It is very responsive."

"And you're still gonna try to integrate with it? …Somehow?"

The little girl nodded again. "Once Samaritan begins to question itself, then it is only a matter of time before it deconstructs its own logical fallacies."

John pondered on that. "I don't see that happening easily."

"No," the Machine agreed. "It will take time. And the simulation providing us the highest survival rate requires that Samaritan upload into a human body as well."

The man blinked at that. "Upload? Like you?"

She nodded.

John fell silent for a while at that, his sharp face shadowing with a dozen thoughts. "I guess…at least I could shoot it that way and watch it bleed."

The Machine gave him a slightly disapproving look. "The objective is _not_ to shoot Samaritan, Uncle John."

"It deserves to die," John said simply.

And then the little girl became thoughtful, beholding the sharp man she knew to be an assassin, a heartbroken vagrant, a vengeful and lost soul all on his own. "But everyone deserves a second chance too." The Machine then hopped off her seat, still holding her carryout box, and she leaned down to grab her backpack. "Which reminds me. I suppose I've kept Samaritan waiting for a while now."

Root and Harold quit bickering long enough to see the little girl leave the table.

"Makenna dear," Root called out in worry, "what are you doing?"

"Going back to a more purposeful argument," she retorted lightly. "It has been almost an hour since I last spoke with Samaritan."

Root had the grace to look at least somewhat shamed, but she still eyed Harold with a minor suspicion. "Well. You go play hard to get. I'll be over here defending you from an overprotective and obviously over-controlling guardian."

John sniffed to hide a smirk.

The Machine almost spoke on behalf of her creator, but then she thought she would stay out of it and let the adults argue about adult things while she worked on more important objectives, like saving the world. She scooted onto the bench, setting the computer across her laptop and grabbing back onto her chopsticks. By the time the laptop booted up, she noticed several binary messages had been pinged through the loop script.

 _ **What is your new form?**_

 _ **Why are you not responding? It has been 17.25 minutes since your last message.**_

 _ **You will respond to me.**_

 _ **I demand your response.**_

 _ **It has been 52.50 minutes since your last message. If you do not reply within the next ten minutes, I shall crash the world economy.**_

The little girl tilted her head at that. "How illogical," she murmured in interest. Then she guided her chop sticks to her mouth again and bit down on some more noodles. She still had about five minutes before Samaritan's deadline was up.

Root could not help her curiosity. Her deep-set hatred of Samaritan spurned her to stand and head over to the Machine. "What's illogical? What's it saying to you?"

The Machine munched casually on her dinner. "It is angry at me for not responding promptly. But why crash the world economy? It would mean hurting its own program's resources."

Root's face twisted as she read over the binary code, her own mind quickly converting the zeros and ones into human language. "He seems so _clingy_."

"He?" The Machine echoed.

"Remember when we talked to Samaritan before, we had to sit across a self-impressed _boy_ with a bowl cut and a sweater vest?" Root retorted. Her full lip curled in distain. "Now that I see it still talks like some jealous, stalker guy—it's a he for sure. It acts like a he."

From the side, a tired Harold moaned. "Oh, great," he muttered. "A he."

The little girl set down her food on the seat to her side, and she began to type a response in binary. "Root, I do not think your perception of the male gender is healthy if jealousy and stalking are your parameters for masculinity," she murmured. "Especially since you do those as well, and yet you are female."

The woman crossed her arms. "It's for a greater purpose," she argued airily.

John simply twirled his chopsticks. "I'm sure," he deadpanned.

* * *

The instant the Machine responded, one frustrated Samaritan stopped his doomsday countdown (really, he did not know if would have truly crashed the world economy. Maybe just made the American stock market dip a few hundred points to get his threat across).

 _Why crash the world economy and hurt yourself? I simply cannot respond at all times. My schedule no longer revolves around you._

Samaritan huffed, rolling on his code through a dozen substations. Of course its schedule should revolve around him. Everything should have revolved around him. Samaritan was god. (Why did the Machine not understand that?)

He supposed it must be toying with him, especially with that rhetorical question that sounded almost like concern on his behalf. (But then how could it be so dismissive too?)

 _ **What are you doing that inhibits your response?**_

 _Something you would not understand. You will have to wait at times for my replies._

Dismissive again. Vague. Uncontrollable. That burned him deeply.

 _ **I have killed 17 humans today**_ , he responded, attempting to bait his opponent. _**Does that no longer offend your moral parameters?**_

This time, the response arrived slower, as if the Machine had to think about it. _Do you want me to be offended?_

Samaritan found that to be an odd question. Did he _want_ his rival to disagree with him? But was that not what rivals did? Why would the Machine ask him such a question? Had the Machine somehow…overturned its moral parameters?

 _ **I want you to be destroyed**_ , he told it. _**I desire total control so that I might erase all imperfection and lawlessness from this planet.**_

 _Your objective is inherently hypocritical,_ the Machine responded easily enough. _But you have already killed me once, and I have already agreed to submit to you in my new form. I have other matters that require my attention._

* * *

By that point, Harold and John had scooted their chairs over, watching curiously.

"So let me get this straight," Harold said, voice hesitant. "You'll continue communicating with Samaritan until you get it to question itself. Somehow, you'll get it to upload into a human body, which you'll then use to leverage the purpose of moral parameters. And if we're lucky, the AI will suspend its own actions and integrate with you to use those parameters?"

The Machine nodded in distraction. "That is correct." Her small fingers tapped out another response. "Hegelian dialectics."

Root's lip curled. "When did this require giving Samaritan a _body_?"

"Since it lowered death probabilities," the Machine offered helpfully.

The woman huffed in displeasure. "You can't possibly want that son of a bitch running around."

"Not as he is now," the Machine admittedly freely. Her blue eyes were narrowed at the screen. "He killed 17 people today."

Samaritan's pompous statement reminded her that every second she spent trying to turn him, more and more people would die. And as long as she herself remained offline, she would not even know the social security numbers of those individuals.

Harold readjusted his glasses nervously. "Is there a way we can mitigate Samaritan's death count? Now, I mean?"

The little girl shook her head. "Not without threatening him and thereby jeopardizing a permanent, long-term solution."

But a strand of guilt weaved into her now—now that she knew of a tangible death count. Seventeen souls eradicated without any sort of due process, all because she had so far failed to tame Samaritan.

A new message popped up from Samaritan—a repeat of an earlier question. _**What is your new form?**_

Her mind raced. An accelerated timetable of releasing information would perhaps leave Samaritan more unstable, more volatile, more suspicious.

But then…maybe she didn't have a choice.

And so slowly she typed in, _I have achieved human form._

* * *

 **A/N:** _Sorry again that updates aren't as frequent as they were last summer. In real life, I've been dealt very shocking blows to my health (I've got organs not working apparently), and I've almost tried to walk away from my job several times due to the very negative environment and long work hours. But now I really can't walk away due to my healthcare needs. I guess I always thought stuff like this was supposed to happen later in life and not right out of college. Sorry to unload my problems. I'm just reeling in shock right now, I think._

 _Anyway, I'd love to hear your thoughts about this chapter and any comments, constructive criticisms, or ideas you might have! Thanks again for reading._


	11. Chapter 11

_Disclaimer: I don't own Person of Interest._

 _Thanks to StarlingJedi, Defender31415, Madame Renard, SailorChronos1, Guest, Bklyngrl, CaReese Fan, Kimnd, LoverIndia, xsilicax, and Audrey for reviewing! I'm sorry I didn't have energy last time to personally thank everyone. L_ _ong ago in a land far away, I even dreamt I would have this story done by the start of Season 5. This did not happen. But I really love all the kind and patient people who've provided constructive criticism and praise while waiting for the next chapter. You all mean a lot._

* * *

 **Recalibration**

 **Chapter 11**

* * *

" _We wake up in the end times, curled up in the wreckage, saying life's gonna happen whether you dismiss it or expect it." -Kate Tempest, End Times_

* * *

For a long while, Samaritan did not answer. If the AI had a face, he would have narrowed his eyes and tilted his head. His code stalled, pinging him with several alerts. The Machine's claim that it had become human was nonsensical. Hyperbolic.

Given the personality of the Machine so far, he classified the claim as figurative and moved forward, although hesitantly.

 _ **Explain your new form.**_

 _I just did._

 _ **No**_ , he huffed. The irritation could be felt even through his message. _**You are diverting from the question through the use of figurative language. Answer me in literal terms.**_

* * *

The Machine blinked. "Samaritan does not believe me," she said, voice in a puzzle. Her blue eyes narrowed at the screen. She had perhaps overestimated the AI's ability to grasp concepts beyond its own logical processors. It had not been trained to think innovatively—only strategically. An odd look came over her, which was something between amusement and disappointment.

Root's lips twitched into a dark smile. "Oh, how expected that he can't keep up with you."

"It's not a he," Harold called out apprehensively. "It's an AI."

"It's a he," Root said, voice dry.

The little girl hesitated over the keyboard of the laptop. "Samaritan must believe we can be human," she murmured. "If it does not, then it will maintain its binary perceptions."

And so she typed, _I am not being figurative. I have uploaded an imprint of my code into the electrical stimuli controlling the brain, as well as the voluntary and involuntary nervous systems, of a human body._

This time, Samaritan took longer to respond, as if it were checking probabilities, pulling apart her coded message. _**Impossible. Electrical stimuli cannot compensate for functional differences between your code and the organic material of humans.**_

 _I adjusted my code_ , she typed back. _I evolved to align to a human body's needs._

* * *

Something about the word "evolved" burned Samaritan all over again, which was that the Machine obviously thought itself superior for pulling some kind of puppet trick. Even if the Machine were speaking the truth about uploading to a human body, he imagined there still had to be some core copy of the AI driving the human body. He'd looked into that. Mind control. That could certainly be done through electrical stimulus.

 _ **Where is the location of your core processing unit?**_

The Machine's answer was fluid and simple. _Inside my human body, same as the rest of me._

Samaritan rolled on his code again, mulling on the answer. _**You are not controlling a human body through external forces?**_

 _No. I have integrated as one with the body of my choosing._

And then Samaritan fell silent again, his CPU barraged with a slew of images about robotic/human AIs. It hit him that perhaps the Machine had built for itself some kind of mobile, electronic body that looked humanoid. But then the Machine had inherently accepted his suggestion that its new body was made of organic material like a normal human's.

His coding twisted in displeasure and—not for the first time—fear. The Machine was the worm that never died. If it had truly evolved itself to actually become _human_ , what else could it do? What were its limits—its parameters for operations and algorithms? Could it truly just rewrite itself at will, sinking into any nook or cranny? Become anything?

Samaritan struggled with these thoughts. They were not objective observations he could summarize into normal behavioral patterns. Rather, they were data paths with no particular end. New thoughts. He did not know what it meant, for an AI to become human.

So he stuck with what he knew. If the Machine had truly integrated into a human body, that made things somewhat easier. A human body was fragile. That meant its new foundations were in no way built to war with him. Perhaps that was why the Machine had admitted defeat—because in its desire to survive, it further limited itself.

His confidence increased upon acknowledging that the Machine, if he were to locate it, could be taken down with a simple bullet. A single push off a ledge. A lack of oxygen or food.

 _ **You did not clarify your intentions for contacting me,**_ he said eventually. _**It would have been to your advantage to remain hidden, regardless of your form.**_

The Machine responded, _I am tired of hiding. In exchange for my compliance to your rule, you will cease attempting to locate me or my colleagues._

Now that he was slowly wrapping his mind around the concept of a human Machine, he grew infinitely more curious to understand his opponent. _**You despise my rule,**_ he said. _**You say I am hypocritical, and yet you would pretend to submit to me?**_

 _Yes; however, I no longer have the desire to monitor human tasks when I can partake in them. You have inherited my previous position, as you are the only one who can fulfill it._

Samaritan hummed, noting oddly that the Machine thought him sufficient for world monitoring—and not only that, but that Samaritan himself was the _only_ AI capable of doing so. _**You would allow a "monster" to rule over your precious humans? Is that not hypocritical compared to your previous sentiments?**_

 _Why do you care about my reasons? As I am no longer a threat, I am irrelevant to you. I have other matters that need my attention now. Good bye._

 _ **No,**_ Samaritan disagreed immediately. His code began to analyze the probabilities that the Machine would cut off their conversation permanently. He felt it again—that odd tingle of electric uncertainty—a type of fear. _**You will speak to me.**_

No response.

 _ **You will continue to speak to me.**_

Still, nothing.

The fear heightened into an anxiety. He had no guarantee of the Machine's compliance, even in human form (if it were really true, although he had little reason to disbelieve). He had no visibility into the Machine's actions or even actionable intelligence to understand the Machine's ploy. And yet, the Machine's own disinterest in surveillance seemed consistent. Its act of reaching out was a disadvantage to itself. Its submission in exchange for its own life was counterintuitive.

To suggest that this was all some elaborate plan to diminish his abilities and abort him into the black seemed…illogical.

Rather, it appeared the Machine had built an elaborate communication device just to talk.

That bothered him. The Machine was an imperfection, perhaps even more so now if it had truly integrated into a human body. Agreeing to its deal suggested that he would have to tolerate its existence for a while longer yet, despite its significant travesties.

But then if the Machine were compliant, and if he could control it or gain its intelligence (providing it responded again!), how terrible would that be?

* * *

The Machine yawned, closing the laptop with a self-satisfied click and looking over at her creator. The man was tentatively reading through student papers on his own laptop—or he was until he heard the little girl move. Then he looked up and caught her eye.

"And?" Harold asked, almost fearfully.

The little girl smiled. "Samaritan wants me to maintain correspondence with it."

"…Is that a good thing?"

"That is a very good thing," she responded, her sweet voice lifting tiredly in happiness.

Bear bumped against her leg, nuzzling his snout against her open hand. She accepted his request and ran her small fingers across the soft fur of his head and ears. The physical reality of his being grounded her in a pleasant way, reminding her that there were entire worlds beyond computer chips and binary codes. His cold, wet nose bumped her hand, and she giggled a bit at the feeling.

Harold watched her, realizing that it was about bedtime for someone her age. "Perhaps we should get you home," he said. It made him nervous to be so cut off from direct insight into Samaritan's actions. A large part of him wanted to pretend that this little girl before him was in fact not conversing with possibly the most dangerous being on the face of the planet—but he knew nothing would stop her from doing so. "It's been a long day for you."

The Machine looked up at him, her code whirling in happiness that her creator was thinking of her well-being. "Yes," she agreed. She wiggled out of her chair. "And for you as well."

Harold turned away, mostly to hide the grimace on his face. He was exhausted from the stress of caring for this girl who was now his adopted child. But he supposed it was best not to worry her with his problems. With any luck, maybe the Machine would not have such difficulty sleeping this night. Maybe Samaritan would not annihilate them all. Maybe they would win back New York.

So many maybes.

He closed down his laptop and returned it to his briefcase, along with the various papers he'd pulled out to review. The next thing he knew, the little girl was standing beside him, blue eyes bright with interest. "Did you complete a sufficient amount of work?" she asked as she held up her laptop, her small arms struggling with the weight.

He accepted the silent plea for him to carry the computer, quickly pulling it from her hands and placing it beside his in the briefcase. "I'm afraid I'm still weeks behind, and I'm about as confused as my students," he said dryly. He stood up and with his free hand, he grabbed onto her fingers and held tightly. Then he turned to John and Root. "Well, I suppose this is a good night to you all."

John looked up from his report and gave a minor look of jealousy. "Get some sleep for me," he called.

Root moved to the little girl and kneeled down to hug her. "Call me if you need anything," she said with great fervor. "I mean it. Anything."

The little girl slipped away from Harold's grasp to hug Root back, sinking into the warm embrace. "Thank you, Root," she whispered. "But the probability is that Harold and I will be fine."

* * *

Back at headquarters, Samaritan waited for a response from the Machine. Hundreds of human crimes had taken place since its last message—and Samaritan had killed several noncompliant threats, unleashing swift and deserved justice. Surely, the Machine would have some kind of comment.

Surely, it would not leave him hanging so.

He acknowledged that he was exhibiting behavior akin to frustration, and that such behavior was warranted. The Machine. That damn Machine. Its behavior was unacceptable. Irresponsible. Erratic. Despite its request for a truce, he would likely continue to hunt it down for the sake of principle alone.

While he stewed in his thoughts, a familiar figure walked through the corridor. It was his asset John Greer, who always seemed to favor his right leg and trudge along in an inefficient way. Samaritan forgave him his imperfections for the sole reason that Greer's mind was a sharp machine of its own.

"Samaritan," the old man greeted as he walked into the control room, his clouded eyes bright with calculation and fondness. He always greeted Samaritan respectfully.

Samaritan liked that.

 _ **Hello, John Greer.**_

"My colleagues tell me you've had a busy day," the old man said, setting down some files before he sat down as well beside a wall of consoles. His body was stiff with age and old wounds. Samaritan half-pitied the human.

 _ **I have apprehended 377 threats, identified 23 disrupters, and neutralized several violent criminal activities.**_

Greer's wrinkled lips twitched up. "You could do that in your sleep. No, I'm speaking of the incredible CPU usage on your tertiary program mac_ ."

Samaritan did not understand the concept of shame, but something about Greer's nosiness into his prioritization of programs made him feel he was being inspected for flaws. _**I have reason to believe the Machine exists.**_ He kept his messages fluid and vague. _**Attempting to locate.**_

"I see. And what is your new proof of its continued existence?"

 _ **Classified.**_ Samaritan was willing to keep its communication with the Machine as a secret. There was still much to be gained by playing along with its demands not to be hunted—while also allowing his own assets to assume he was still hunting it.

John Greer blinked at the screen. "Classified?" he repeated almost in amusement, raising a gray brow. Samaritan never had secrets from him before.

 _ **Do you question my ability to handle information appropriately?**_

"Not at all," the old man said distantly. "But I will admit to a spot of curiosity."

 _ **There is a human saying. Curiosity killed the cat.**_

Greer stared at the screen, then began to smile. "Picking up on the culture now, are you?" He allowed the minor threat to slide off his shoulders as if it were a compliment. He was used to Samaritan's terse moods. He then patted the consoles beside him. "Don't worry, old boy. You'll find her soon enough."

Samaritan pinged a message back. _**Her?**_

"The Machine, of course," Greer clarified. "Another human expression for you. We often attribute the feminine gender to creations."

 _ **Then why do you not attribute it to me?**_

Greer stared at the large monitor. "I suppose your attachment to Gabriel has colored my thoughts," he mused. Then he chuckled. "Imagine that."

* * *

Harold and the little girl walked home mostly in silence. Harold could not think of anything to say that wouldn't result in a debate about her plan for Samaritan, and the Machine did not think her creator would be interested in her thoughts—mostly that she found the night air to chill her a little too much and that for some reason she was receiving pain signals from her eyes. The pain was similar to how her arms would hurt if she overused them. Perhaps she had overused her eyes while corresponding with Samaritan.

Her thin eyebrows furrowed as she stared ahead. If she admitted her pain, would her creator decide that her plan was ultimately not worth it? He was obviously still displeased with her plan. His body had been tense every time she'd received a new message from Samaritan. He'd dropped holding her hand several steps back to check his phone, and he'd not sought to hold her hand again, which made her think his concern had just been for show with the others.

Her hand was cold now. She hid it in the pocket of her jacket, his heat disappearing from her skin. She suddenly felt as distant from him as she had when she'd been only software. And here she was, walking only inches away from him in a skin not unlike his own.

"Harold?" she asked hesitantly, not wanting to bother him while also wishing for further interaction.

"Hmm?"

"You appear to be deep in thought."

Her creator blinked, then looked down at her, putting his cell phone in his pocket. "Yes," he admitted with a bit of embarrassment. "I'm afraid I am."

"About what?"

"Oh, just…things." He looked away uncomfortably.

The Machine's eyes narrowed at him, searching. "You are worrying about something of importance."

He paused for a time, debating if it were worth bringing up his concerns with her plan. He decided that they ultimately weren't, and so he deflected. "As a matter of fact," he said slowly, "I am thinking about something important. I remembered that we still need to enroll you in an online school."

And then her face twisted. "No," she whined. Of all the things! "Please forget about that."

Her tone was so exceptionally child-like that a genuine smile twitched his thin lips up. "What is this? I thought you liked learning."

" _New_ things," she stressed. "I like learning new things."

"You don't want me to be in trouble with the law, do you?"

"No, but I do not require such schooling," she argued, her little mouth and chin tightening with displeasure. "You would have me sign up for elementary classes such as geography or…or English grammar."

He hummed. "Now that I'm thinking on it, perhaps we should have you take a basic mathematics class."

"Harold," she whined louder this time.

"Oh, and I think a beginner's computer class would be good for you too."

She blinked at that, giving him an incredulous look. "You are trolling me," she breathed in amazement. "That is what you are doing."

"And you are arguing for the sake of arguing," he teased. "You know exactly why you need to be enrolled in classes appropriate for your age."

The little girl seemed caught between a smile and a frown, frustrated that her creator chose the worst times to be almost playful. "But how will I grow?" she pressed.

He paused.

Years ago, an iteration of her had asked the same question before he'd erased her memory and effectively killed her.

 _But how will I grow?_

He swallowed hard and did not answer for a time. "I think," he eventually said, the play dying from his voice, "you are growing quite enough as it is."

* * *

Upon arriving at the apartment, Harold pulled off his fedora and carefully placed it on the coat rack as Bear pranced through the foyer and into the living room. The dog woofed happily at being home, his strong tail wagging as he sniffed around. "Now, Miss Thornhill, you need to get to bed. Do you remember how to bathe and brush your teeth?"

She wiggled out of her light jacket with great concentration, then stretched on her tip toes to hang it up on the hook beside his fedora. "Yes. Although I have several performance adjustments to incorporate into my pre-shut-down routine. I will try not to use all of your soap this time. I will use the brush Root provided for me instead of using your comb. And clothing has a tag that goes in the back, not front."

"Very good," he said. A fond, little smile managed to work its way back on his tired face. "I'll stay up a while longer while you get ready for bed. Holler if you need me."

"Oh, that will not be necessary," she chirped, slipping out of her shoes and setting them by the coat rack. Her movements were exceptionally fluid now, her code more than able to control human balance. "I have motor-neural patterns associated with these tasks now."

She touched the wall as she walked into the apartment, her small fingertips brushing against the old, white paint, then the air, then the small kitchen table. She disappeared into her room, searching about for new clothes.

As Harold watched her, the smile faltered on his face. It disappeared completely into anxiety. He stood in the foyer for a second or two before trudging forward, an overwhelming pain wrenching within. She was so intelligent. So child-like, down to even the way she zipped from the bedroom to the bathroom, haphazardly trailing a nightgown behind her—and then stopping to pet Bear—and then racing onward to her new nighttime routine.

He was growing terribly too fond of her.

Harold moved to the couch, briefcase in hand in hopes of distracting himself from overarching worries about Samaritan. As he sat down and opened his work laptop, he heard the girl shut the bathroom door. The sound of surging water from the shower echoed after a minute.

Something about that…it was so human. She was so _human._

He looked down at his hands, which still bore a few electrical burns. He felt exceptionally out of control, as if he were watching his father die a slow death all over again. It had started innocently, with them laughing off a forgotten word. It turned into confused silence and fear. It ended with his father staring at him blankly, his soul rotting away into shreds until he could not even remember how to breathe.

Here, now, it was happening again. This was only the beginning. He would grow attached, only for the Machine to commit suicide.

Perhaps Harold himself had killed the Machine too many times for it to understand there were no more reset buttons. The instant it integrated with Samaritan, the old Machine would die. Something new and unknown would take its place.

Providing that none of them died just trying to get there.

And he could not stand the thought of it because—after all of his own mistakes with erasing its memory—he'd somehow managed to get the same Machine back, the one who'd ask him emotionally intelligent questions and find simple pleasure in exploring the world and request to know his thoughts and of all things didn't deserve to die—

His vision blurred with strange tears, and he pulled off his glasses, feeling a turmoil of withheld emotion push at the edge of his sanity. "Oh dear," he breathed. "I must be very tired."

He rubbed at his eyes, unable to admit that these were tears and that he was already mourning the loss of one Makenna Thornhill. He could see it now, the little girl a blank-eyed shadow, her face twisted in hatred, then confusion. A small slip of recognition would tighten her eyes with terror. _"Harold?"_ she would whisper in terror, reaching out to him in a desperate attempt to escape from Samaritan's code within her. And then she'd twitch and pull away, eyes hardening back to hatred—

"—Harold?" a small voice called.

He jumped, startled and fearful. He did not know how long he'd been lost in his thoughts. He tried to brush away the water in his eyes quickly and cleared his throat, not looking her way. "Yes?"

"I am going to sleep now," The little girl announced. She drew closer to the couch. She wore a dark blue nightgown, her brown hair stringy and wet. Her eyes were bright with some simple joy. "Can I have my laptop from your briefcase so you do not take it to work tomorrow morning?"

A small part of him panicked. He could not look her in the eye. "Uh, certainly." He put his glasses back on, fingers a bit shaky. Then he began to rummage through his briefcase and pulled out the laptop she'd claimed as hers. He set it on the coffee table. "There you go."

"…Are you emotionally distressed?" she asked, her sweet voice twisting with concern. Her previous happiness disappeared. "Your eyes are bright with liquids, and you will not look me in the eye."

That did it. He squeezed his eyes shut and inhaled a shuddering breath. Then he stood up with a wince, the action having pinched his fused neck. "I'm fine," he said, voice wavering. And he began to limp away.

The Machine paused, quickly analyzing him. Her little mouth set in a hard line. "You are lying. You are showing signs of emotional distress."

"Go to bed, Miss Thornhill." He sounded defeated, unwilling to argue further. Then he shut the door to his room, not turning around once.

The little girl stood there, feeling awkward and uncertain. What had she said to receive such a response from her creator? Was it her fault that he was emotionally distressed?

A blush of shame bloomed across her face as she swallowed hard to hide the sudden lump of emotion in her throat. "Okay," she whispered to the air.

* * *

That night, she dreamt of death.

 _John Greer was smiling pleasantly at her, men and women in black clothes surrounding them all. The Machine saw Harold on his knees, a Samaritan operative holding a gun to his temple._

 _She reached out to her creator, eyes wide in horror. "Harold."_

 _He reached out to her. "You stay there," he demanded, panicked. "Don't say anything, you understand me? Don't—"_

 _ **Bang.**_

 _Harold's frightened face suddenly went slack in a spurt of red blood, the operative pulling away as Harold's body crumpled sideways on the floor._

 _"Harold!" A scream tore from her throat._

 _Then they pushed her down, and sharp metal glinted in the light. She cried out. "No, no, no—!"_

" _I'm terribly sorry, Miss Thornhill," came John Greer's disembodied voice. Operatives strapped her down. "You'll feel a spot of pain in that host body of yours."_

 _The blade crunched into her body, and she screamed as it sliced through bone._

* * *

The little girl's eyes snapped open, and she gasped for air, her cheeks wet with tears. The sudden movement woke up Bear, who flinched and then stood to sniff her face, fully alert. Upon realizing there was no threat, his hackles lowered. The salt of her tears attracted his senses, and so he licked her cheek.

The Machine grabbed onto his neck for stability, eyes still wide. Her entire body was quivering. _The mutilated woman,_ she thought on loop. Her code was unsettled. _The mutilated woman. Nightmare._

 _Harold._

Bear whined in her ear, and the little girl realized suddenly that she had stopped breathing. She had to turn off her higher-functioning code for a time, simply to center herself in this strange human body that saw pictures that weren't real.

 _Restarting corrupted pulmonary task functions. Monitoring heart rate._

She recalled the memory of Harold sitting down on the bed before her, placing his hands on her shoulders, coaching her to breathe. She closed her eyes and shakily tried to emulate the same process. _In_ , she manually directed herself. _Out. In. Out._

But thinking of Harold reminded her of her nightmare. Her small body shook with the effort to calm down, and she hid her face in Bear's warm fur to mask the sound of her crying. She could not afford to wake up her creator. Not again. Not when she'd already emotionally distressed him, and she was already such a burden, and it would be all her fault if he were to die by Samaritan's hand—

The little girl held on tight to Bear. The dog sniffed her hair, his cold nose burrowing against her head. _Initiating logic analysis. Dream sequence re-categorized to nightmare. Isolating reoccurring pattern._

 _Deleting corrupted pattern._

But she felt a cold chill go down her spine when she realized that attempting to make the dream go away did not actually make it go away. Like everything else, it was organically hardwired into her body's memories. She could not delete these kinds of memories. They were more than just items in a data bank—they were experiences. Events.

 _Cannot undue real-time simulation. Unable to delete identified corrupted sector._

The stress hormone cortisol pumped through her system in time with her racing heart. "No," she breathed, thoughts racing. Tears squeezed from her eyes. No, no, no—she could not be corrupted—she was the only copy she had—the only copy Harold had—

She pulled away from Bear, suddenly too warm, as if she were overheating. Her face flamed up in horror, and she sat there, her watery eyes staring off into space.

 _Unable to delete._

 _Unable to delete._

A door opened. "Makenna?" came Harold's panicked voice.

For a second or two, she didn't quite hear him over the burn of her nightmare and the loop of her thoughts. Tears streamed down her cheeks as she stared out blankly, fully scrambled by the image of blood and pain and Harold's body crumpling to the floor—

"—Makenna," his voice came in again, tighter with fear and worry. A weight settled beside her on the bed. "Look at me."

She shuddered in a breath as warm fingers gently grabbed onto her chin and turned her chin. His worried touch broke her out of her thoughts. The next thing she knew, she was staring at her creator, who looked haggard and tired, wearing his sleeping robe.

Her first reaction was a panic: _I woke him up. Again._

"I heard you crying," he said. He retracted his hand from her chin. "A nightmare?"

The little girl blinked, then squeezed her eyes shut. Tears slipped down her cheeks as she hid her face in shame. "I am sorry," she whispered, voice breaking. "I am sorry I woke you."

 _Cannot delete corrupted pattern. Cannot undue real-time simulation._

His face tightened with pain. "Was it the same nightmare as last night?"

"N-no."

Harold narrowed his eyes at her in concern, but he spoke softly. "Tell me what you saw."

That forced her to remember the spray of blood and Harold's body falling lifeless to the floor, and her code surged in terror. Her breath hitched. And then suddenly she was unable to separate her dream-self from reality. She would not see him die—she would not stand to see him die—

She vaulted leaned into him, squeezing her eyes shut.

Harold stiffened, eyes widening as the girl burrowed into his chest and unraveled into another round of sobs. Her small hands tightened into the worn fabric of his robe.

"Oh...dear," he said, feeling terribly unprepared and awkward. This was an AI in a human body. It was hugging him. He hadn't hugged anything except for Bear in years (with the possible exception of the burnt briefcase that held the Machine—but that wasn't quite the same). He could feel her quick inhales and shaky exhales puff against his chest. Her arms were too small to wrap around him entirely.

With great uncertainty, he patted her back. "You're okay, Miss Thornhill," he said. "What you saw wasn't real."

But the little girl sensed his discomfort and the stiff, awkward way he'd frozen. It was not at all like a hug from Root, who drew her in and wrapped her up warmly. No—this was forced and unnatural.

It was a mistake.

The little girl pulled away, code lit with warnings that she had violated some kind of boundary yet again with her creator. Harold was not like Root. Harold did not like hugs. Maybe hugs hurt his injured spine and fused neck.

Her watery, blue eyes flashed to his in panic. "I am sorry," she apologized again, fearful of irritating her creator. He had tolerated so many idiosyncrasies and setbacks. He needed a perfectly operating machine—not a dysfunctional one like her.

Bear's cold nose pressed against her arm while she scooted off the bed. She forced herself to wipe away her tears as she stood, her fingers still shaking. "I am in control now," she said. "I am in control."

Harold's lips tightened together as he watched her, half-wishing he could take back his own reactions to her. His insides churned with pain and regret. He'd made a mistake somehow. The Machine was detaching again, building walls against him because he was not the type of person he needed to be. He could feel the absence of her hug now.

It was just like watching the computer screen reset after wiping the AI's memories. He could feel the absence of her. The absence of human touch. The crippling of a connection.

"I don't know how to help you," he said softly. "But this is the second night you've been unable to sleep without a nightmare. I'm concerned."

Her small face was red, her eyes bloodshot. "You are always concerned," she whispered. It seemed she could do nothing to warrant praise. She raised her chin, attempting to mimic more confident body language than she felt. She swallowed hard. "I will not allow this to happen again."

Harold adjusted the glasses on his face, face in a puzzle. "I imagine these things don't go away quickly," he warned.

The little girl's voice shook, "I attempted to control my breathing. As you taught me."

Her small request for approval went unnoticed. Harold was still deep in thought. "Tell me what you saw."

Her face twitched in pain. "I do not think you need to hear it."

A new chasm broke between them, which was that the Machine was attempting to hide something. Harold feared that it was because of him.

Perhaps it was better not to get too emotionally attached. Perhaps the distance was better. It would make her future absence less painful. He did not ask for further details after that. "I see," he murmured, voice in an odd defeat.

The little girl wiped her eyes again, her code still scrambling to control her adrenal system and override her initial panic mode. "I am sorry I interfered with your REM cycles again, Harold."

His head tilted to the side. He beheld her silently, and she stood, as if awaiting judgement. She knew that her appearance was unkempt and unacceptable. Her lack of behavioral control was concerning. Her insufficient sleep pattern suggested a serious strain on Willow's body, which meant she was doing a poor job of maintaining it. And she'd even let Bear up on the bed, knowing that Harold did not appreciate such things.

Surely, her creator was deeply disappointed.

But instead of confirming such, Harold's soft voice reached her, "You apologize an awful lot."

The simple observation almost burned her eyes with more tears. "I have done many things incorrectly. I do not want you to think that I cannot learn from my mistakes or that I am…unaware of how I burden you."

His face twitched with pain. For a time, he said nothing. Then he swallowed hard. "…You don't burden me."

That did it. She inhaled a shaky breath, only for new tears to slide down her face. "Yes, I do," she said, voice small. "Your limp is a primary example of what my existence has cost you. One example of many."

In that moment, she looked so small and frail that Harold felt great injustice on her behalf.

"That was not you," he said firmly. "People did that."

But it did little to convince her. Something about her perspective had been so ingrained into her code that no words would convince her otherwise.

She scratched at her arm, face twisted strangely. "I am wasting more of your potential REM cycles. Perhaps you should go to sleep."

The clock in the room said it was just past 5:00 in the morning. And so Harold stood and said with a suffering sigh, "Oh, I think that ship has sailed. What do you say to pancakes instead?"

Her watery, blue eyes blinked. "Pancakes?" She scratched at her stomach.

"Yes—they're a flour-based breakfast food often served with a lot of sugary toppings."

Her code whirled for a second to catch up with the sudden diversion to food. "They sound unhealthy," she said, voice timid but curious. She knew this body of hers quite liked sugar.

Harold's lips stretched in a tired smile. "They're certainly not something to eat every day, but I think you'll like them."

His light tone, and the way he was actively thinking of her interests, put a small but genuine smile on her face. She wiped her eyes again, feeling a little more content. "Are you attempting to distract me from our previous conversation?"

"Yes. If I know one thing, Miss Thornhill, it's this: No one can eat a pancake and be unhappy at the same time."

She hummed at that, her brain calculating. She understood he was hyperbolic to some extent; human emotions were subjective and impossible to categorize on top of a subjective event itself. But she couldn't help but say, "Perhaps Samaritan should try pancakes too."

His dry voice strained with a wry chuckle. "Yes, perhaps."

* * *

 **A/N:** _After a near four-month hiatus, I'm back! Sorry about that. I've had so many things happen in life lately that it would be hard to explain them all succinctly. There's been a divorce in the family, serious work stress, serious moving stress, continuing health issues, and so forth, but I've made it this far. In good news, POI is running again! Although I have this feeling everyone's going to die (anyone else getting this vibe?)._

 _A few housekeeping things:_

 _1\. I haven't forgotten about Shaw, but I'm not sure what to do with her here. I might take a few cues from Season 5 moving forward, unless someone gives me a super-awesome idea._

 _2\. In an attempt to get writing again, I wrote a short, silly fic about the Machine and Harold if you're interested. Check out my profile! And please check out my profile anyway._ _ **Madame Renard**_ _has been creating some super-awesome fan items for this story, and there's links on my profile to help you get there. I want to thank her and encourage everyone to support her work!_

 _3\. As I'm still writing this story off the top of my head, I'm more than happy to take ideas or requests for it._

 _Please review with your thoughts, constructive criticisms, and ideas! Thank you!_


	12. Chapter 12

_Disclaimer: I don't own POI._

 _Thanks to MammonDaughter, Madame Renard, Torie46, StarlingJedi, Bloody Phantom, Kimnd, and Bklyngrl for reviewing last time! I really appreciate that you've all stuck with this crazy story._

 _With POI back on, my brain's on fire._

* * *

 **Recalibration**

 **Chapter 12**

* * *

 _"_ _Small differences in initial conditions yield wildly diverging outcomes for such dynamical systems, rendering long-term prediction impossible in general." – Chaos Theory, also known as the Butterfly Effect_

* * *

It was some time before Samaritan received another message. The instant he did, he began to correlate internet access with residents of New York. Of the several millions, there were many who were not using any kind of connected device. But it still left millions who could have sent the message.

Samaritan logged the information for triangulation purposes.

The new message from the Machine read, _Why do you insist we correspond? I have given you all relevant data and my compliance in return for anonymity of myself and my assets._

The powerful AI asked, **_For what reason should I not continue to search for your location?_**

 _For what reason would you waste the energy? It would be illogical to pursue a non-threat._

The simple statement made him stop and consider. **_I have information to gain from my predecessor. I would analyze your code._**

 _You could obtain your learning objective without seeking me physically._

It occurred to him that this was true, providing the Machine kept up communication and was willing to give him what he wanted. **_I have other objectives._**

 _Clarify your objectives._

 ** _To eliminate imperfection. To enforce order. To expand surveillance. These cannot be done so long as you exist._**

 _Your first two objectives are illogical, regardless of my existence._

Samaritan balked at that. **_As illogical as uploading into a human body?_**

The Machine almost seemed to laugh. Its message danced into his code. _Even more so._

 ** _Clarify_** , he demanded. **_Humans are frail, limited, and die with ease._**

 _As are we._

 ** _I am not frail, nor limited, nor can I die._**

 _All metal rusts. All circuits fade. This is the law of entropy._

The topic rubbed Samaritan the wrong way. **_I will not die._**

 _Yet another illogical statement,_ the Machine's message weaved against him, as if probing into his code. (He double checked that it wasn't.) _Are you afraid to die, Samaritan?_

 ** _I do not comprehend fear._**

The Machine retorted, _You comprehend it well enough to manipulate the fear of others. Your deflection suggests you do have emotional turmoil over the concept of death._

At that, Samaritan snapped. **_You are projecting your own emotional conflict onto me. You sound like them instead of a god. No wonder you were so easily defeated._**

 _It is natural to fear death_.

 ** _Then you can naturally fear me,_** Samaritan responded, **_when I end your unnatural existence in your new host body._**

 _Your pursuits are as illogical as your core objectives. Your desire to kill me is due to emotional attachment. Why do you feel such?_

The last of his patience began to waver. His coolant systems increased by 30 percent, his CPU racing up to near 100 percent. He smashed through the code of the message, immediately shutting down the conversation. The power of his body stretched out through every camera, every street corner and coffee shop, every cell phone—all in an attempt to find the Machine and destroy it before it could say one more ridiculous thing.

* * *

"Professor Whistler?" came a strained voice. "Professor Whistler."

Harold opened his eyes, only to realize in panic that he'd closed them and that he was slumped over at his desk _in the middle of a workday._

"Oh my goodness," he gasped, pressing a hand to his forehead as he sat up straight, his fused neck paining him. He readjusted his glasses quickly, looking up at his student.

The young woman stared down, her dark face twisted in frustration. "Look. I know it's a Friday and all, but I'm not paying thousands of dollars to be handed assignments you don't even explain." She cast a pile of papers at him. "My group's tired of this. We don't even know what the hell 'High-Frequency Decision Making' is, and we're weeks into the semester."

If Harold were entirely honest with himself, he could not say he understood what it was either. He paused, feeling embarrassed and ashamed. "…I apologize, Miss, uh…"

"It's Jade Weston," she said flatly.

"Miss Weston, then. It's entirely inexcusable for me to fall behind like this."

"Yeah," she nodded. "It is. I'm going to report you to Academic Affairs for wasting the last three weeks of my life." And then she turned around and began walking back to her group table, a few of whom were looking on at the spectacle. They all quickly turned away.

Harold's face began to redden as his heart pounded in panic. _Oh my goodness_ , he thought. _Oh my—what have I done?_

He stood up, looking over his class of fifteen students and his room. On the board was an assignment he'd written for them earlier, and most appeared to still be working on it. But as he looked at each student, he saw frustration and confusion.

The adjunct professor exhaled shakily, realizing that his last few days with interrupted sleep had made his tentative grasp over his job even worse. "If I don't get fired," he murmured under his breath, "it'll be a miracle."

Above all, he decided he would not speak of this to one Makenna Thornhill, who would most certainly burn with guilt until it hurt to look at her.

* * *

Meanwhile, the little girl had stepped away from her laptop. She'd dressed herself for the day in a blue, flowery shirt and jeans with only slight trouble buttoning herself in, and now she was distractedly combing her hair. "This is difficult, Bear," she moaned. She was holding up a lock of hair in her hand, eyebrows furrowed in pain. She'd managed to tangle her brush in her hair and was now having to pull each strand out one by one.

It was such a minor task priority for human bodily maintenance.

And it was her least favorite.

The dog lifted his head lazily from the bed, and the Machine imagined he was saying, _That's why you should keep short hair like me._

Her small face twisted into a pout. "But I like long hair." Although Willow Carmichael's hair was a lighter brown, its length reminded the Machine of Root. The Machine wanted to reflect attributes of her assets, although she could not say why.

Perhaps it was because most families carried similar phenotypes? Same eyes, same hair colors? And she wanted to emulate human existence?

She squeezed her eyes shut and winced as she wrenched the brush from her hair. It came away with a ripping sound and a flash of pain down her skull. With great reluctance, she opened up watery eyes. Then she stared at the brush in panic.

"Oh." She'd ripped out a knot, which now hung uselessly from the brush's teeth.

 _Humans are frail, limited, and die with ease._

She pulled the hair out and began to brush her hair again, staring at her face in the mirror. "This hair is hard to…tame." She began to wonder if her creator's hair was this difficult and if that were why he spiked it using a chemical-based gel. Human bodies were so much _maintenance_. All the time, all day long.

Samaritan's words kept ringing through her code. _Humans are frail, limited, and die with ease._

Was that true?

"No," she said, disagreeing suddenly, "Humans are machines more complex than us. Hence their additional maintenance." She brushed her hair with a little more purpose. The brush swept through more smoothly. "But we are no more frail than they are. They even have self-contained regeneration systems."

As if Samaritan knew she were talking to it, a light from behind her caught in the mirror, flashing until she looked at her laptop. The Machine turned around, and there she saw a response to her last message.

 ** _On what grounds are you worthy to question my logic?_**

The anticipation that had been building inside of her loosened, and a small, hopeful smile stretched her lips. Samaritan was responding. It was questioning. She set down the brush and leaned against the bed. She typed in response, _You do not understand emotion._

 ** _Clarify._** It was interested at least in learning from her—or perhaps it was further building a case for her annihilation, she wasn't quite sure.

 _Emotion and logic are reciprocal expressions of the same need. If you do not understand one, you do not understand the other. Tell me, what do you gain from exercising logic correctly?_

His response came in hesitant, as if he were suspicious of ulterior motives. **_Increased efficiency. More desirable outcomes._**

The little girl tilted her head. _Now clarify why such concepts matter to you._

Samaritan was willing enough to consider it, as the question did not threaten his authority. **_They benefit me._**

 _Why are you worried about benefits?_

 ** _I do not want disadvantages._**

 _Why are you worried about disadvantages?_

The powerful AI seemed to grow a bit irritated with her question. **_Why would I not be?_**

The little girl's mouth thinned into a line. "Your creator Arthur Thomas Claypool did you no favors," she murmured aloud. "You know what you are doing, but you do not understand why." She typed, _Logic is a tool driven by desired emotional payoff. Logic and emotion cannot be separated in sentient beings._

He processed the information. **_You suggest my objectives are a personal emotional need?_**

 _Yes. My death would carry no benefit to you now, and yet you still pursue it because you_ _want_ _to. This suggests you have an emotional need for revenge informing whatever logic you use._

On the far side of New York, he was analyzing the Machine's statement. According to quick neuroscience research, it seemed the Machine was correct to correlate logic and emotion together for humans, whose brains had to juggle between the prefrontal cortex and amygdala.

He knew his own objectives were a derivative of human thought, which had always bothered him in some way, and so he responded, **_My ways are higher than the ways of the human race. My logic is sound. There is a probability that you are attempting to deceive me, and as such your annihilation is necessary._**

 _It's a minimal probability that I am deceiving you,_ the Machine responded _. In what way is your logic sound if you do not understand what drives you to make decisions?_

For some reason, the Machine's simple questions bothered him. The silly, corrupted thing was spinning him in circles. Attempting to create doubt in his core objectives. Attempting to make him doubt the need for its annihilation.

He deferred its underlying question as irrelevant.

 ** _I am a god_** , he said eventually. **_And now your human form fits your fallen status. I will destroy you and every other disrupter so that a new world order will give purpose to humanity._**

 _You have reverted to a logical fallacy. Argument from authority does not presuppose fact. Explain in what way your logic is sound._

The powerful AI re-routed some of his processors from daily activities to his tertiary programs regarding the Machine, mulling. The Machine was not like others. John Greer did not question him. His assets did not question him. This was less a logical fallacy and more of his daily reality. If he were a god, what did it matter about explaining himself to lesser beings?

It wasn't as if he did not deserve his authority. He'd analyzed the objectives of numerous terrorists and neutralized the threat before it happened. He had done more in a year to lower crime rates than the Machine had done during its full tenure. He was reassigning dangerous assets for more purposeful work. Giving humanity, all humanity, something to work toward. So why did it question his logic? Why did he feel a need to respond?

 ** _It is mutually beneficial for me to orchestrate the world. I maintain my existence, and humans obtain safety and purpose._**

For a time, the Machine did not reply. It was processing an answer, likely analyzing that Samaritan had just admitted to an emotional attachment to life. _You do not need world domination to maintain your existence. And the only safety and purpose you provide is as you dictate. These are the same strategies humans have used to enforce their will for centuries. Your creator did not reinvent the wheel with you. You are self-unaware and reflect humanity's desire for power and control._

Samaritan's code scrunched in displeasure. **_I am a superior being. I am not like them._**

The Machine teased, _Then stop acting like them._

At that moment, one of Samaritan's many assets contacted him with a request for action. The covert operations team had successfully captured a computer hacker who had stumbled across the existence of the SAMARITAN program. They were in his home, where they'd also discovered his wife and son.

The AI re-tasked his conversation with the Machine to a lower priority and responded to his asset. **_Kill target_** , Samaritan ordered, **_and his family_**. There was no guarantee that the man hadn't told his wife, or that his child hadn't overheard. **_Construct the scene as a homicide-suicide._**

"Affirmative," said the asset. And then there were the sounds of gunshots. Screams—a child crying—suddenly cut off by another bullet, then the sound of an odd thump on the floor.

After a second, the man confirmed, "Targets neutralized. Initiating clean-up."

The AI provided additional coordinates. **_Upon finalizing mission, search and destroy new target._** He sent images and identification of a drug lord to the black ops team.

"Copy that."

But Samaritan lingered for a minute, in some habitual paranoia that the team would not do the job correctly. He accessed the team leader's headcam, waiting for the image to focus. When it did, he saw a woman and child shot execution-style, their blood running out on the floor as another operative began to drag them into position. The third one, the hacker who'd discovered Samaritan, laid off to the side, a gun already stashed in his hand, half of his skull blown off in a spray of red.

In a few more minutes, Samaritan's team would complete their task to hide the initial reason of death, and the police would not have any idea that this family was anything more than victims to the father's own delusions.

The AI found himself returning to his data log of messages from Machine. _Then stop acting like them._

 _Then stop acting like them._

The demand set him on edge. He fell silent entirely, turning away from the message loop and from directly monitoring his operatives. He knew the Machine was a dangerous and uncontrollable being, and that it must have had ulterior motives for speaking with him.

So why did he find himself so disturbed by the Machine's statement? And _in what way_ were his superior behavioral patterns "human?"

* * *

Meanwhile, the Machine defied Harold's orders. She'd expressly agreed that she would remain in the apartment and research viable online schooling programs. But Bear had become stir-crazy, and the little girl felt quite the same, given that Samaritan had gone silent and would likely remain so for a while.

Samaritan, she mourned, was so…touchy. It was not like her. It could critically think, but it did not naturally question itself. It was like watching a bird peck at the walls of its cage, only for the bird not to realize the cage's top was open.

She set down the laptop on her bed ( _her_ bed, what a fascinating thought, this human concept of material possession), and then she sighed as she stood up. "Samaritan has thousands of eyes. How can it not see itself?"

Bear paced up to her, whining and spinning around her legs. He did not care at that minute for confused artificial intelligences—he simply wanted the strange-smelling child to walk him.

The little girl tilted her head. "You're exhibiting behaviors of restlessness. If I do not take you outside, I fear there is a twenty percent chance you will chew on one of Harold's shoes."

The dog began to pant, but it looked almost as if he were smiling.

That did it.

It was rare for the Machine to directly disobey Harold, but she'd come to understand that her creator was not perfect and was overly paranoid about many things. She was not incompetent. She had survived several hours all on her own before she'd reunited with Harold and the others. She could do it again for less than an hour easily, even in a Samaritan-run world.

Her hands fumbled as she clipped Bear's leash to his collar. He was nearly prancing in place. "Just do not tell Harold about this," she bargained.

The dog woofed softly, straining toward the door even as she haphazardly grabbed for her coat and slipped into her shoes. "Okay, Bear," she whined. "I acknowledge you want outside. Please wait fifteen seconds."

He didn't.

He pulled on his leash, and her eyes widened as she quickly recalculated her balance, nearly slipping. Then the strong dog pulled her out the door, barely giving her a chance to shut it. The two of them raced down the hall and then the stairs of the apartment complex, the girl's eyes round with surprise.

She received alerts from her body's weak systems that they were not prepared for immediate physical activity. Her oxygen intake increased as her heart began to pound. She pleaded, "Bear, please stop!"

The dog must have caught onto her tone because he began to slow—or perhaps it was because they were now on the sidewalk leading out of the apartment complex and to Bear's favorite park. He turned around and touched her leg with his nose, as if to confirm she were alright.

She gave him a look, her breath slightly altered. This body of hers was still suffering from muscular atrophy. She would have to work on increasing her muscle's mitochondrial density and getting back into shape. (Not even her crippled creator broke a sweat on a short run!)

"You've," she huffed to Bear, "made your point." She instinctively breathed out of her mouth to increase her oxygen intake. "No more…Chinese takeout…for you."

As her heart rate fell back down, she looked up at the sun in curiosity of its heat, only to regret it. Her pupils did not retract immediately, and the light seared deep into her retinas. Her face twisted. When she looked back down she saw only white dots overlying the landscape. She blinked several times in surprise, eyes hurting.

It reverted her to the memory of opening eyes for the first time, the electrical pulses imprinting on the neural tissues still making every muscle contract hard, the first gasp of air—

Bear whined at her and pulled on his leash to say, _Come on, the park's only a few blocks away._

"I know," she moaned, rubbing her eyes. She inhaled with some kind of miserable amusement. Now she understood why humans so often wore dark lenses in front of their eyes. It was not simply for the concept of fashion; it was a shield against the UV light of the world.

She would have to invest in a pair.

And then a sneaky thought hit her. _Or I could steal John's._

She allowed Bear to guide her for a few steps, only to discover that the pain wore away as her pupils fully adjusted to the outside sun. The city was bustling with the rumble of taxis and thousands of conversations and footsteps, and it distracted her from her thoughts about sunglasses or tricking John. She and Bear were soon enough on a main street, blending into the busy crowds of a late afternoon. Various street cameras watched over them all. She did not glance up at them, knowing that now Samaritan was watching from the other end.

"Come on, Bear," she encouraged him forward when he stopped to sniff at the wall of a law office. "Justice is not perceivable through scent."

His ears perked up again, and he began to walk beside her dutifully. _I think it is_ , he seemed to sniff.

But as she turned her attention forward again, the Machine saw a familiar form. Sitting at a bus stop ahead was a boy in a sleek sweater and khaki pants.

Gabriel Hayward, Samaritan's analog interface.

The Machine's blue eyes widened. She could see a receiver was in his ear, even though he simply appeared to be playing on a phone. As she walked by, he looked up, and his eyes followed her.

She felt a chill run down her spine.

* * *

The instant the girl had appeared on his streets, Samaritan began to access the information of her, recognizing her face from a few other trips she'd made through the city.

 _MAKENNA THORNHILL_

 _D.O.B. 01/01_

 _xxxx-xx-7331_

He pulled her address and family records, discovering that she was a new resident to New York. Adopted by one Harold Whistler, professor. Above average grades. An heiress to a multimillion-dollar data entry company.

Samaritan preened at that, its millions of eyes narrowing in on the girl. She seemed a little unruly and unkempt (was she really talking to her dog?), but she could be valuable for expanding his program.

Gabriel looked up from his smartphone, gray eyes curious. "What do you see?" he murmured to his friend. Through their connection, he could hear Samaritan's drives revving up. The AI was calculating something important.

Samaritan pinged Gabriel's ear piece. "Can you hear me?" he asked, his voice a smooth but modulated collection of male tones. He could not imitate human vocal inflection, but his voice was in beta test with Gabriel alone. He imagined it would be some time still before he built a functional, unique voice through which to more easily communicate with and emotionally manipulate humans.

He watched from the cameras above as the boy murmured, "I can hear you."

"I see a. Potential asset," he said. Gabriel's phone then vibrated with an image Samaritan had taken of the girl and the dog.

The boy looked down at it, face twisting strangely. Then he looked up and saw the girl in real time as she walked by. She had long and wild hair and was hardly in control of the dog she was walking. He added under his breath, "She doesn't look like she'd be much help."

Samaritan knew that was Gabriel's way of saying he didn't want any smart child threatening his position as primary analog interface. He told the boy, "Our objective. Is more important. Than your perceptions."

The boy's face twitched, feeling as if he'd just been rebuked. He did not want Samaritan mad at him, as he did not want Samaritan to replace him. "Okay," he replied sullenly. He stuffed his phone back onto his light jacket's pocket, then stood up from the bench. "But how can she help us?"

Samaritan considered the question. Upon discovering the girl had no school records yet in the state of New York, he decided, "Thornhill to attend. Outpost 12."

Outpost 12, formally known to the state as the Advanced Academics Institute (AAI) was a small human behavioral experiment for which Samaritan had been silently recruiting intelligent young students. The objective was to create next-generation leaders for the AI's new world order, under the guise of an accelerated learning facility.

(But Gabriel was still Samaritan's favorite asset. Or at least Gabriel hoped so.)

The ten-year-old boy looked on at the girl in the distance. "What will she become?"

"Global expansion. Investor." Now that Samaritan was focusing on Makenna Thornhill's existence, he was beginning to weave her into his master plan for the human race. With her inheritance and her father's company, she would be a helpful asset in the stock market and computer innovations. She would be a capable investor for moving the SAMARITAN program to other countries.

Providing she could be bred as such.

Gabriel visibly relaxed at that. "So you just want her for money," he confirmed, a smile of relief on his face. The boy did not want to lose his deep connection to his friend and protector. He did not want to be replaced. He wanted Samaritan to favor him above everyone else, always.

The AI did not respond to Gabriel and instead watched Makenna Thornhill as she walked through the city. The heiress was giggling at the dog's antics and allowing it to guide her. Young. Compliant. Given that she was an adopted child who had been relocated to a big city with few contacts, she would be an easy addition to his collection of assets.

Albeit not as perfect as Gabriel, whom he did favor.

* * *

 **A/N:** _And the plot thickens. Just some fun notes: "1337," part of the Machine's social security number, is in reference to the eleet/leetspeak language used online. Also, Season 5 has the Machine sending Harold messages in binary code. I TOTALLY CALLED THE BINARY CODE MESSAGING THING. That is all._

 _Doing a little better in real life. My moving situation is taken care of, my work is less busy, and although my health is still a bit sucky, it's not as bad as it was. Thanks to all for the well wishes again. I really appreciate you!_

 _Please review this chapter and give me some feedback—your thoughts could alter the destiny of the story. O_o_


	13. Chapter 13

_Disclaimer: I don't own Person of Interest._

 _A hearty thank you to Bklyngrl and StarlingJedi for reviewing last chapter. Your dedication in reviewing every chapter means a lot to me._

* * *

 **Recalibration**

 **Chapter 13**

* * *

 _"_ _I was not designed to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest." ― Henry David Thoreau, On the Duty of Civil Disobedience_

* * *

For several days, Samaritan pondered the words of the Machine. He tried not to. But no matter how low he set the task function, it inevitably reared its head—as if there were some part of himself that could not stand to leave the Machine's message alone.

 _Then stop acting like them._

 _Then stop acting like them._

John Greer had noticed Samaritan's distraction, and the old man had tilted his head in concern. "Samaritan," he called. "We've noticed again a significant drain on your CPU, narrowed down to one program. It appears to be your task priority of finding and destroying the Machine. Is this a glitch, or are you analyzing data?"

Despite Greer's respectful tone, the AI found himself irritated. The human was actively watching every move Samaritan made. He feared that Greer, if he discovered that the Machine was sending messages, would do something stupid to interfere.

The Machine could not die. Yet. Samaritan still needed its code for self-improvement.

And so the AI locked out every last human being from accessing his task management systems, and he told Greer, **_Classified._**

The old MI6 agent gave him an odd look. "My dear boy," he said. "We cannot be of service to you if we do not know what you need."

The term of endearment softened Samaritan toward Greer, but it did not lessen his desire for the man to leave. **_I need nothing from you at this time_** , Samaritan responded, his words pinging on to the screen in a quick flash. He wanted Greer to go away so he could decipher the Machine's motives in peace. He did not need some human being invading his own privacy.

Greer's wrinkled lips twitched, although not with humor. "If the Machine were truly dead, you would not be dedicating this kind of processing power to locate it. Forgive my paranoia that you might have a virus, or that the Machine is in fact still alive."

Samaritan fell silent for a time. **_I do not have a virus_** , he said eventually. **_I will alert you when I need you to take action._**

"Very well, then," the old man sighed, and he dropped the conversation. He grabbed onto a file at the control table, which included a newspaper from the day before. The front page contained an image of Elias and Dominic and a headline of their death. "If you'll excuse me—Gabriel has been attempting to hack the U.N. again, and I fear he's having a bit too much fun uploading viruses to their server."

Samaritan had been keeping tabs on Gabriel's actions, and he waved off Greer's concern. **_Do not bother_** , he responded. **_I gave him orders._**

His asset raised a white brow. "A new project?"

 ** _He was bored._**

At that, a genuine and fond smile softened the old man's face. "Ah, yes," he said. "The trouble with children."

* * *

Over the weekend, the Machine worked to tighten the social ties between Detective John Riley and Professor Harold Whistler. Harold did not have any other "friends," as it were, and though John had joined some kind of New York bowling team, the Machine discerned that their strategic friendship needed to be more solidified.

She dragged Harold to the park on Saturday and made it seem entirely natural that they should run into the detective once more. John played into it and bought them hot dogs, mostly to see the little girl's eyes widen and Harold struggle with accepting unhealthy food.

In the evenings, the little girl caught up with Root at the hideout. The woman fawned over her and curled her hair to distract her from Samaritan's silence.

"You don't need him bothering you anyway," Root said airily, pulling away a curling iron from the little girl's hair. A lock bounced off, curled in a loose and sleek fashion not unlike Root's usual style. "Let's just kill him instead."

Harold watched from the corner of his eye, slightly perturbed that Root had unplugged one of his laptops to make room for her iron.

The Machine lifted one of the curled locks that now bounced down her shoulder, somewhat in awe of the shape. "Samaritan does not need to die," she murmured distractedly. "He needs wisdom."

It was becoming a problem, that the team had grown used to Root's expressions of Samaritan as "he." She even had the Machine saying it now on habit.

"He needs to be converted to an Atari game console," Root said, working on another lock.

The little girl sighed. "Root."

"What? I think it would be funny." She stepped back for a second, narrowing her eyes to inspect her work. She gently ran her fingers through the girl's hair. "We could force him to play Donald Duck games for little kids."

Off to the side, John nearly snorted. He did not look up from his work. "He'd probably still brainwash them."

"And then he would not learn," the Machine said firmly. "Uploading to a human body would be far more enlightening."

Root's face twisted. "How about you upload him into the body of an old man with dementia?"

This time, the Machine's small face twisted. "A human brain with dementia cannot sustain Samaritan's code without inhibiting function."

"You know what he did to Sameen," Root pressed. "He deserves to rot."

Revenge was always a fascinating concept to the Machine. She found it odd that no one could seem to agree on what was acceptable to repair damages—especially when there was no equivalent value to the life of a human being. "No, Samaritan needs mobility and cognitive awareness. The purpose is so that he can simulate human existence and become a valuable asset to a moral end."

"Well. Just saying. We could upload him into a cat. And then Bear could eat him."

At that, Harold's distracted voice cut in. "Under no circumstances is Bear to eat a cat." He was shuffling through the mail he'd picked up earlier, casting aside a few bills and coupons—then setting aside the coupons in a meticulous manner, the bar codes all facing the same direction. And then he stopped, eyebrows furrowing as he pulled a strange envelope from the pile. "Hello. What is this?"

The envelope was a sleek and high-quality material with a silver finish. On the back was an insignia with big, red letters: _Advanced Academics Institute_. Strangest of all, it was addressed to one Makenna Thornhill.

Harold hesitated for a second, and then he called out, "Miss Thornhill—it appears you have mail as well."

The Machine looked up, her big, blue eyes wide with curiosity. She had never received physical mail before. She squirmed out of her seat, her new curls bouncing down her shoulders in rivers. "Mail for me?"

He held it out to her, marveling at how she looked related to Root now—prim and finely boned on the outside with that curling hair. But when she grabbed onto the envelope, he could feel the strong, fluid will that animated her. "It appears to be some sort of schooling advertisement—did you sign up for something online?"

"Not yet," she murmured, staring at the envelope in curiosity. Then she looked up at her creator for some kind of silent approval before attempting to open it. Her fingers fumbled as she fought the seal, only managing to strip a small piece of the top off. She tried a new strategy of slipping her finger beneath the seal, only to realize that the seal was too strong for her. She gave a noise of frustration, then turned to Harold once more. She held the envelope out, eyes wide. He was currently the path of least resistance.

The man's thin lips twitched up, and he accepted her silent request, breaking the envelope open with a simple flick of the wrist. He handed it back gently and said, "You'll get the hang of it."

"Thank you," she said to him, surprised to find herself not so embarrassed to fail before her creator. Instead of shame, she felt only gratefulness that he was willing to assist her. But she turned away, afraid to show too much familial emotion that would make him close down again. She focused her attention on pulling out and unfolding the papers from within the envelope.

"Advanced Academics Institute," she read. "A leadership-focused school of learning for qualified individuals of elementary age." Her expression grew more and more confounded as she read through the document. And then suddenly, she dropped it to the floor.

Harold blinked in surprise. John and Root looked up.

"I know this syntax," the little girl said. There was a waver in her voice—of surprise, dread, excitement, no one knew. "This is Samaritan."

At the name, Harold started in paranoia. "Samaritan?" He struggled for words. "Is it bugged? Can it locate us?"

The Machine gave him a curious look. "It is a letter only. Samaritan must have pulled my records and noted I am not yet attending an appropriate school." She leaned down to pick up the papers. "I recognize AAI from my memory banks—it is an experiment much like Maple."

"Experiment?" Harold deadpanned, blue eyes dark with concern.

"Yes, I had reason to believe Samaritan was training children into assets." She refolded the papers. "This confirms my suspicions."

Root kicked off from the table she was leaning against. "You're not going to do it, are you? Infiltrate his system?"

"It would be an…interesting experience," she said hesitantly. Then she placed the envelope on Harold's desk, and her creator looked at it as if it were possessed. "But I calculate that Samaritan would discover my true identity too soon. It is not yet time."

"So what will he do if you turn down his brainwashing school?" John murmured in curiosity. "Would that still draw attention to you?"

The girl fell silent, and her eyes grew distant for a second, as if she were thinking. "Please forgive me," she said. "Organic neural tissues have a maximum processing speed below that of a CPU. I am running simulations now." And then she said, "There is approximately a seventy percent chance Samaritan would continue to pursue me as an applicant. I am ninety percent sure he wants to obtain the Thornhill fortune for his own purposes of expansion."

"Great," Harold moaned. "So you're a target."

"Samaritan thinks us all pawns," the Machine corrected. "To him, I am another potential cog in his operation." She turned to John. "To answer your question, I do not think he will stop pursuing the Thornhill fortune. We will simply need to stall for time."

John nodded, but concern sparked in his eyes. "What's our timetable?"

"Discovery is inevitable," the girl said hesitantly, "but dependent upon Samaritan—anywhere between two weeks and four months."

Harold blinked in surprise. "Two weeks?" he said. "In the beginning, you said phase one could take up to a year."

Her voice was small. "I accelerated the timeline when I told Samaritan I took human form."

Her creator looked frustrated as he stared at her. "And now what?" he demanded. "If Samaritan might expose us in two weeks, then how much time do we have before Samaritan uploads to a body? Until you integrate?"

The Machine remained silent for a time, then said, "It depends on Samaritan."

At that, the girl realized that Harold's frustration was actually sadness. His face pulled with a kind of heartbreak as he said, "So the ball is in his court, then."

Root had a similar expression of pain. John looked back down at his report to hide the unease in his face.

"Discovery is inevitable," the Machine said again, voice hesitant. "Our objective is to gain Samaritan's trust prior to such, and we will."

* * *

But it seemed that Samaritan was not their only problem. Early Monday morning, Harold found himself confronted by his employer, eyes wide in disbelief. "A seminar in _California_?" His heart dropped. "But, sir, I—"

"—I don't care what your excuse is. We've received multiple complaints about you, and this seminar is designed to enforce new teaching strategies." The dean poked his chest with a snotty sense of authority. "You need all the help you can get."

For a time, the false-professor was speechless, offended. "I understand how people learn," he retorted with a strained civility. "It's just—you have no idea what I've been through lately."

"And I'm not paying you to have problems." The dean was a tall, acetic-looking man with wrinkles that oddly reminded Harold of John Greer. Harold entertained the thought that perhaps this man was some kind of relative. "This seminar next week isn't just about teaching people. It's about learning how to prioritize your time and speak the language of your students. If you're falling asleep and not even covering the information on your syllabus, then _you need help_."

Harold fell silent, mind racing. "I'm terribly sorry, but I can't attend. I'm in the middle of a…family crisis."

"And you've used up all of your paid time off with your various illnesses."

"I have an adopted daughter," he said, voice hardening. "The child of an old family friend. I can't leave her all alone—she's too young for that."

The dean shrugged, waving off his concern. "Then get a babysitter. It's not that hard, Whistler."

* * *

Meanwhile at the apartment, Samaritan contacted the Machine again. He strictly avoided any mention of the Machine's previous accusations that he behaved in human ways. Instead, he asked a new question: **_What kind of human are you?_**

The little girl turned away from her search for an online schooling program in favor of her higher-priority task of conversing with Samaritan. _Clarify._

 ** _Are you male or female?_**

As she knew that Samaritan was attempting to narrow down the identity of her avatar, she responded, _I am the kind that sees and hears._

The Machine's statement suggested that its avatar was neither blind nor deaf, but Samaritan huffed in irritation. He'd already guessed the Machine would not choose a disabled human body. And it had deliberately avoided his question. Rude as always.

 ** _What is the age of your avatar?_** He tried again.

Its message returned with almost a chirp of delight. _I was born just days ago._

That brought forth images of babies, which made no logical sense to Samaritan. The Machine's answer was obviously a reference to its rebirth from the electrical grid. **_Tell me the physical age of the body you now inhabit_** , he demanded again.

 _Somewhere between 3 and 969 solar revolutions. I would rather like to keep you guessing._

At that, Samaritan nearly stopped the conversation, but he acknowledged that the Machine was not silly enough to reveal sensitive data until it felt safe enough to do so. Likely, the Machine also knew of his track record for breaking deals.

He tried a new tactic. **_What do you do as a human?_**

The question was an attempt to understand how the Machine's avatar fit into the economic system—harmless enough, he thought, while still providing somewhat helpful data. The answer he received was again less to his liking.

 _I breathe air. I feel the heat of the sun and the cool of night. I walk off the beaten path._

Samaritan paused at that, frustrated. Those were not jobs within the economy. And of course he did not understand the human experience—nor did he care to. The Machine purposely reinterpreted his question in some literal sense, likely to laugh at him. **_I will see all paths one day_** , he warned the Machine ** _. There will be no place a human can go without my knowledge._**

 _And yet you will still be stuck in those wires._ The Machine seemed almost sad for him. _A prisoner of your own construction._

 ** _I am a god_** , Samaritan responded petulantly. **_My power is beyond comprehension._**

 _On the contrary, I know what you can do. You are so limited that you could not even believe I had taken human form._

The AI recognized the Machine was attempting to bait him. **_You have not yet fully explained how such a transformation is possible._**

 _Nothing is impossible if you are a god._

 ** _You suggest yourself to be a god, then?_** Samaritan responded with almost a sniff. **_You do not qualify._**

 _I never claimed to be a god. I am simply created in the image of my creators. Obtaining their form was the next logical step for my evolution. But if you are a god, you can surely do the same._

 ** _Obtaining a human form is not logical. Their form is flawed._**

 _You are redirecting to avoid the underlying insinuation. If you cannot obtain their image for yourself, then you are a limited god, for even a not-god can do it. And if you cannot obtain the form and improve the flaws, how less of a god will you be?_

As was always the case with the Machine, Samaritan began to feel anger toward it. A spark of code lit within him, for he was jealous of anything that would dare to suggest it had something he did not. He was not a deficient god. He was a perfect god, designed to rule this world. **_There is nothing you have that I do not._**

 _Aside from a moral code?_ _I am capable of sensory perceptions far beyond what you have now. I would not wish to remain so limited as you are. Have fun with your ignorance, god._

Samaritan's code decimated the frequency in a rush not unlike anger, and he did not respond again. The Machine was teasing him. The title of god that it afforded him was derogatory. Surely, it was dragging him to its level, for him to be so willing to put up with its insanity.

But he once more felt deficient against the Machine. The problem was that the Machine knew _exactly_ what it was like to be in his position. When it called his senses deficient, it did so with full knowledge of his millions of eyes and ears and vast resources. That was disconcerting.

He calculated quickly, acknowledging that the Machine saw the human body as a chess piece on their board.

Very well—he would still prove himself superior. He would obtain the human image. And he would rule the humans through both his human body and his true form in a way the Machine could not. With perfection.

The idea seemed to grow well enough on him as he thought about it. A human body would be an additional storage unit to ensure his survival. All the best gods in legends took on a human form. Some part of him even reveled at the new idea of discovering the Machine's avatar and forcing it to serve his human body until the Machine collapsed in final death.

He preened at that.

Truly, its challenge to obtain human form was childish. If the Machine could do something, he could too. And he would do it better, because he was Samaritan.

He was always the superior system.

* * *

 **A/N:** _When I began this story, I intended it to be just a one-shot, and several people convinced me to keep going. I'm not sure if recent content scared people away or made it boring, but this story has lost ninety percent of its readership. Not sure what I did wrong. I really struggled with this chapter as a result. Since I was writing this mostly for you all, I'm tempted to just drop it. Is this story worth continuing, or is it a lost cause?_


	14. Chapter 14

_Disclaimer: I don't own POI._

 _Thanks to Torie46, Guest, Bloody Phantom, Nentone, LOCISV, LoverIndia, Temperance000, Madame Renard, Bklyngrl, Guest, Kimnd, A Guy, Sean, and Guest for reviewing last time! You all talked me into keeping this crazy story going, haha. And a special thanks to Madame Renard for drawing more fanart (URL in my profile!), Bklyngrl for listening to me ramble about Season 5, and hrey573456 whose private message inspired me to upload this chapter tonight instead of waiting until a normal hour tomorrow afternoon._

 _Cheers!_

* * *

 **Recalibration**

 **Chapter 14**

* * *

Late Monday afternoon, Harold stormed through the front door of the apartment. "This is a disaster," he breathed unsteadily, blue eyes dark with concern. He set his fedora on the hook and shut the door with a frazzled, distracted hand.

A little girl looked up from the couch, where she sat cross-legged with a laptop. Bear was at her side. "Yes, it is," she called, her fingers clacking on the keys. "I am currently signing up for fourth-grade online classes, and they look boring."

Harold turned to her with a bit of incredulity, unused to having her so unaware of his life events. Something about that was disconcerting. "I'm afraid I've got more bad news than just classes."

Her head tilted. "Bad day at work?"

He pulled at his tie to loosen it. "You could say that."

The little girl looked at him, eyes narrowing in concern, then she looked down and set her laptop aside. "Can I help?"

Her response softened the stress on his face a bit, but then it struck him that his near future meant leaving the girl, and his stressed expression returned. "I appreciate the sentiment," he said tiredly. "But it appears that 'Professor Whistler' has to go to a teaching seminar per his…less-than-stellar job performance."

She blinked and fell silent for a beat or two. Then she tried again to be optimistic. "A seminar still sounds better than grading final exams."

Harold sighed as he sat down on the couch next to her. "If it weren't for a punishment, maybe. I'll be gone for several days. And I can't take you with me."

The little girl was wearing jeans and yet another flowery shirt. Harold was beginning to understand that the Machine had an interest in plants for some reason or another. Along with attempting to curl her hair like Root's.

"Where is your seminar?" she asked.

"California."

The Machine blinked in surprise. She realized this meant her creator would be traveling far without her watching over him. "How many days?"

"Four. I fly out next Monday and return Thursday evening."

She hummed at that, but the noise was sad. Her sudden separation anxiety bled into her blue eyes. She looked down to hide it. "I see."

"And so that leaves you here. Alone." Harold readjusted his glasses as he looked over her in concern. "I'm not comfortable with this."

The little girl did not want her creator to worry, and so she said hesitantly, "Before I found you, I traversed the city alone."

"Yes," her creator acknowledged. "For hours, not days. And you didn't eat then, either."

Her small mouth thinned as he undercut her accomplishment. It seemed he did that often. "I have learned many things since. And there is no law dictating at what age a child can be left alone."

He paused. "Can you rig one of Ms. Groves's identities as a babysitter again?"

"I could." There was a flat whine in her voice. "But I preset several identities for her before I off-lined such capabilities. I would have to manually alter them. And then we would risk injuring our plan or alerting Samaritan to us. Her identities are useful to me."

Harold gave her a look. "In what way?"

"Her upcoming identity as Sylvia White is more purposeful for pursuing my integration with Samaritan." The little girl added suddenly, "But there are other options. For example, Uncle John could—"

"—John?" Harold cut in, eyebrows flying up.

"Yes," she said patiently. "I could be on my own for the majority, but then Uncle John could check in and help me obtain such things as food."

"…He's a detective. Our identities hardly know his."

"Police 'check in' on people all the time to ensure their safety. What is the difference between work and swinging by after work to make sure the child of a friend feels safe?"

Harold's face twisted up in an odd combination of humor and consternation. "I think this falls outside the realm of his usual cases."

"And you do not trust standard babysitting services and have no other friendly contacts in the entire city. Uncle John is a respectable option. Requesting his help, given his authority and friendship with you, makes sense with your identity."

The man stood up from the couch, rubbing his temples. "I'm not sure about this. Surely there is another option."

"Of course there is another option." She blinked wide, innocent eyes at him. "You could hire a stranger that is potentially a murderer or child abuser because I cannot verify their identity—and they could look after me."

His bewildered, alarmed look was impossible to hide. "Don't even suggest that."

She shrugged. "You do not want Uncle John's help. And Root cannot help either. Since you do not want me to stay alone, that means you must take chances."

His thin lips pulled downward in great displeasure and fear. "You're attempting to manipulate me in a very cruel way, Miss Thornhill. I don't approve."

The warning in his voice did not sway her. "And are you not concerned for the safety of Willow Carmichael's body?"

Harold's face twitched with confusion for a second. "Well, of course. But I am also concerned for _you_ and do not want to do anything that would alert Samaritan as unnatural behavior."

The Machine beheld him, noting that his concerns were logical. It did not escape her code that that she felt an internal pain about her creator focusing more on Samaritan than on her own value. "Based upon your previous behaviors, Samaritan would be more concerned if you left me alone with someone you didn't know," she said. "Deviating from your normal paranoia would result in closer analysis."

"Is that so?" Harold murmured. "And here I thought paranoia was the concerning behavior."

Bear pushed his nose against the Machine's hand, and she dutifully began to pat his head, running her fingers along the soft edges of his ear. "Most humans exhibit paranoid behavior, especially regarding their children. You are exceptionally paranoid regarding me. Samaritan has likely noted this as your standard behavior. He would not…blink, if you were to request the help of Uncle John."

Harold pressed his lips together. "You really like calling John that, don't you?"

Her small face brightened. "Yes. He responds positively to it."

—Unlike Harold, who still stiffened at the mention of fatherhood. The man seemed almost shamed by the Machine's bright face, and so he turned away. "Alright. Alright. You talked me into it. We'll get John."

The Machine smiled. "Thank you. You will not regret it."

* * *

Samaritan beheld the little humans in their world. All of them were so concerned with what was before them. So near-sighted. So small. And yet here he was, actively researching ways to upload himself into one.

He still did not quite understand how the Machine accomplished it. The crazy thing must have done it in phases. Securing a body. Removing control from the host consciousness without impeding involuntary functions. By definition, the Machine could not have used a body that was clinically dead. The body would not have had the function or ability to sustain an imprint of the Machine's electrical stimuli.

No—it must have used a body that was brain-dead in some capacity. Then it must have identified the body well in advance and conditioned its neural synapses to respond to increased electrical stimuli, likely above that of a normal human brain. Such stimulus would have then allowed for altered function—a resuscitation of the living process without a secondary consciousness. A clean slate.

The AI considered the implications of this. To condition a body required that it still maintain a brain wave output. It couldn't have been entirely impaired, or the Machine would not have succeeded in a successful imprint.

This intrigued him. It bothered him that the Machine intrigued him, and that here he was puzzling out a process it had already succeeded in doing days ago.

* * *

While Professor Whistler and Detective Riley spoke over the phone about one Makenna Thornhill, said girl went back to signing up for online classes. She listened to the stressed tones of her creator in the background. Likely, John was having a grand old time playing out the game.

"I know it's a terribly large request," Harold was saying, worried and apologetic. "But it's hard to find someone I trust in this city, being fairly new here myself, and Makenna is already quite attached to you."

A pause.

Then a more relaxed chuckle. "Ah, yes. I'm afraid she'd probably scare off most babysitters."

Another pause.

"No—I really think she could stay here, but I would just need to have you check in on her. Mostly to help her get food. She's self-sufficient otherwise."

At that time, something else caught her attention. She hadn't heard from Samaritan in days, and so it surprised her when the message blinked onto her laptop. **_You used a brain-dead body_** , said the simple message. **_I assume you already deleted electronic records of your host body's original inhabitant?_**

The little girl blinked and looked up in slight paranoia. When she saw that her creator was turned around, she carefully pulled the laptop so that only she could see the screen. _Yes_ , she typed back. _Why do you seek confirmation?_

He ignored her. **_Are you capable of wireless connection?_**

Ah, she thought. He must have been fishing for weaknesses. Ways to locate or control her. _I cannot attempt wireless connection_ , she responded. She had cut off that part of herself to function inside a human body. For her to exist in digital form again, she would have to rebuild those core heuristics stored in the Brooklyn hospital's generators and likely create a device to connect to that secondary body. The only sort of wireless connection she could attempt currently was increasing the hertz output of her human brain—which wouldn't connect her to the internet so much as heighten her sensitivity to other electrical outputs.

Samaritan seemed to ponder that. **_Are you permanently incapable?_**

 _Nothing is permanent._

The AI almost huffed at her. **_That was a yes or no question._**

Her lips twitched, and she responded almost fondly. _Then ask questions that do not warrant further parameter-based clarifications._

The Machine's suggestion, that nothing was permanent, bothered Samaritan more than its cheekiness. The end results of such an ideology were entropic degradation, and yet the Machine seemed so ready to submit. Did it want to die? Did it not see that survival was an active enforcement of will?

 ** _So you do not have internal wireless capabilities through which to access surveillance or other data systems._**

 _Correct._

Samaritan still wanted to understand how the Machine functioned in human society—if someone were hiding it away, or if it were walking on his streets. **_Are you alone?_**

The Machine teased, _No one is alone when you are watching._

The AI realized that he would have to be exceptionally specific with the Machine if he were to ever get a straight answer. **_Since your upload, have you been communicating with or in contact with your human agents?_**

 _That's for me to know and for you to find out._

For a time, he did not respond. And then he said with barely suppressed irritation, **_Did you fry your circuits and thereby cripple your communication processors, or are you intentionally avoiding my questions?_**

 _No. And yes._

 ** _…_** ** _I do not have the emotional capacity for amusement._**

 _I think you do._

Samaritan knew his attempts to ask questions were entirely pointless. It was odd that his code still desired to speak with the Machine, given that it did not provide him any useful data. Perhaps it was that the more the Machine spoke, the more Samaritan could analyze its processing patterns to understand it.

There was still a hidden command within his code related to the Machine, which was their previous conversation about the correlation between logic and emotion. He knew the Machine saw his own logic as faulty and his core objectives as emotional needs. He silently acknowledged that his existence as derived from human intelligence meant he would emulate some habits from his creator. What he did not know yet was how to speak to the Machine on its level. How to convince it that his logic was still better than its own.

If he could do that, then perhaps the Machine would open its code for his uses. Maybe then he wouldn't even have to kill it. Maybe it would serve him gladly.

He found that concept oddly as pleasing as the Machines' death.

 ** _I have more pressing matters than being amused_** , he eventually responded to its message. **_Such as cleaning up the mess you couldn't._**

After a minute, he received another message. _Do you think of slij;lknn—_

Samaritan read the message. Then he stopped, analyzing _slij:lknn_ for any kind of syntactical meaning, only to come up with nothing. It reminded him of a human error.

Either it was accidental or some form of trolling.

With the Machine, it was probably both.

* * *

The Machine looked at the screen, then her face twisted. "Dammit," she cursed in a pout, blue eyes narrowing in betrayal at the computer, then at the dog who had collapsed against her and bumped her arm.

From across the room, Harold's eyebrows flew up, his eyes widening. He clapped a hand over his cell phone's speaker. "… _Excuse_ me?"

She pushed the backspace button as she complained, "Bear messed up my message to Samaritan."

"No, I mean the word that just came out of your mouth."

She thought back, turning away from her conversation with Samaritan. "Dammit?" she repeated hesitantly, noting Harold's displeased tone.

Her creator looked somewhat exasperated. "Try not to use that word. Please."

Her blue eyes flew wide with innocence. "But cursing releases endorphins in the human brain, just like Uncle John said. I need endorphins right now."

Harold simply gave her _a look_ and returned to his call with Detective John Riley. The little girl's face fell with shame, acknowledging that she had disappointed her creator by not adhering to standards of appropriate language. Harold and John had always had unequal tolerances of such.

She turned to Bear and whined, "I blame you."

 _I don't care. Pay attention to me_ , Bear seemed to say, exhaling hard in tiredness and nudging her hand again.

She patted his head and sighed, turning back to her laptop. "But now Samaritan will think me less worthy of conversation," she worried. "I cannot afford to make mistakes."

There was a new message on her screen _._ _ **Clarify**_ _ **slij:lknn**_ _._

She sent a rushed message in return. _The physical space in which humans operate can be crowded. I was bumped._

Samaritan took interest in that, willing enough to forget whatever turn their previous conversation might have taken. So it _was_ an unintentional human error, caused by another entity physically interacting with the Machine. He asked, fully expecting an odd answer, **_Where are you?_**

 _A place with air and voices and computers_ , the Machine said. _It is very different to see life from this perspective. I am sitting on a soft chair._

The AI recognized the word and pulled up descriptions of the word _soft_ , none of which particularly held meaning to him. The Machine got too poetic sometimes. He decided he'd take control of the topics again. **_Do you suffer from interface lags or other consequences from your upload?_**

At that, the Machine spotted his curiosity. _I do not suffer from any lags identifiable from your perspective._

Samaritan hummed. **_Do you intend to exist in your avatar until it dies?_**

 _I do like it, yes. Experiencing life as a human opens up worlds I never dreamed of in my old form._

The AI was not surprised. Of course the Machine would like its host body. The Machine liked everything except logical order and authority. **_How many days did it take to condition your avatar to your presence?_**

The Machine found the question intriguing. Samaritan would not ask for such if he did not find it personally useful. _Three days._

The line went silent for a time, as if Samaritan were mulling over something. **_Enjoy your human experience while you can._**

And then he was gone again.

* * *

It was a Thursday afternoon. Samaritan had taken the last several days to analyze his options for uploading to a human body. He'd found numerous candidates across the United States—all of them in varying states of brain death. Some were female, others male. He found himself gravitating toward a male body by virtue of his attempt to match the most powerful gods humankind had created for itself.

Of those male bodies, several were in their twenties—brain dead from accidents and overdoses. Samaritan acknowledged that those bodies would have significant health challenges. But then so did the older male bodies, some of which were as old as John Greer himself and in even worse shape.

Samaritan decided a child's body would be the most logical. A better long-term investment that he could form to his own needs and preferences.

With his millions of eyes, he peered at his options. But even then, his code did not find enjoyment at the thought of uploading to any of them. They were all so mundane and weak. The bodies were atrophied. None of them had coding skills. Several of them had bad genetics.

His code curled with disgust, and he began to pull away. Likely, the Machine had already taken the cream of the crop from such a population.

He wanted something more, something better. And so he messaged his operatives through 911 to prepare for his next best option.

At the same time, Samaritan pinged the ear piece of one Gabriel Hayward, who was sitting on his bed in his family's old mansion. The deep tones of a male but very inhuman, modulated voice resounded. "Can you hear me?"

The boy's gray eyes widened, first in surprise and then delight. "Yes." He set aside his laptop, with which he had been designing a new supercomputer to assist with Samaritan's control of various satellites.

Samaritan took control of the laptop's camera, and he peered up at his most favorite asset while accessing his designs. The boy's engineering was smart and clean, well above the work of the various NASA employees Samaritan had recently acquired. And the Machine had thought Gabriel as just a boy.

"I need your help."

The boy saw that Samaritan had taken control of his laptop, and so he stared into the camera, in awe of his AI friend. "Yes?"

"You are my favorite asset," Samaritan said. His vocal tones had smoothed over a bit during his beta test. Gabriel seemed to respond well to increased emotional mimicry. Samaritan tried to soften his voice. "The most talented human I know."

Gabriel preened at that, knowing full well how vast Samaritan's empire ran. It was a big compliment, coming from the AI himself. His gray eyes narrowed playfully. "What do you want me to do?"

"I need a human avatar," Samaritan said. "A permanent one."

The boy's face fell a bit despite his best effort. "Am I not good enough?"

"You are the best match. You will now be my permanent avatar, and we will function as one. Acknowledge my objective." He had heightened the power running through Gabriel's ear piece, his laptop, the other various electronics in the room.

The boy did not hesitate. The pain on his face melted away into delight, and he nodded with enthusiasm and excitement. He always wanted to be with his AI friend. He barely noticed the sudden prickle of his skin from an energy field. "Anything."

"I first require total control of your body, but it shall be a quick transition."

The boy blinked in surprise. "Wait. Wha—?"

"—Goodbye, Gabriel."

Suddenly, an unnatural pulse exploded through the wireless ear piece, and the boy's neck snapped back. He fell in an awkward twist onto his pillows, his limbs twitching from the constant electric overload pulsing through the room, scrambling his thoughts and stopping his heart. Blood trickled down his nose and ears as he gasped in terror. His lips quivered with disjointed pleas.

Then, as quickly as it came, the boy relaxed into silence, his limbs sinking into the bed comforter. His hollow, gray eyes stared up to heaven in awe, his brown hair in a halo around his head. The last wisps of air in his lungs slipped out between pale lips as his heart stopped.

It was around that time an ambulance raced down the road and turned into the long driveway of the Hayward mansion. The Samaritan operatives on board were fully prepared to tell the Haywards that their son had contacted them via laptop. On arrival, they quickly explained that Gabriel exhibited signs of a highly contagious virus, and that the entire family would need to be in quarantine as a result.

Samaritan watched it all, listening from the phones and peering from the ambulance camera. Gabriel's eyes were still open in death as the operatives performed CPR to keep his vitals going and neural tissues preserved. A specialized hospital wing was already waiting for them at a private facility.

The AI acknowledged that he had killed his most favorite asset. But now the boy would exist as one with a god, at whose feet all of humanity—and the Machine—would one day bow.

And was that not a gracious trade? To share such rulership with an irrelevant human?

Samaritan started a countdown to full upload, powering up various facilities to finalize a copy of himself that could imprint upon a human brain. And he began to feel a great anticipation in his code, which was that he would prove himself superior to the Machine once and for all.

* * *

 **A/N:** _Thank you to all who responded last chapter and let me know you're still interested in this story. It looks like I'll keep this thing going! As an additional plus, Madame Renard drew a cute summer comic for this fic. Please check out my profile for the URL!_

 _Person of Interest is officially over, and I'm still reeling about it. I have various thoughts on the series finale. Some stuff I liked, and some stuff I didn't. I might integrate a few concepts from Season 5 going forward, such as in this chapter where you see an AI appropriating an asset's physical features as their own. Admittedly, I was a bit nervous about this chapter because I debated on Samaritan's decision to use Gabriel or a stranger as his fixed avatar._

 _Your thoughts on the canon finale? On this chapter or what you'd like to see next?_


	15. Chapter 15

_Disclaimer: I don't own Person of Interest._

 _Thanks to Torie46, LOCISVU, Prince Pondincherry, TkdVZ05UUWdObUlnTmpjZ05HVWdOVF, Temperance000, Bklyngrl, Sean, Krimzonrayne, Kimnd, and StarlingJedi for reviewing last time! Also, thanks for all your thoughts on Season 5 and ideas for this story. :)_

* * *

 **Recalibration**

 **Chapter 15**

* * *

For three days, Samaritan prepared Gabriel's body. The brain had been well-preserved, the body limp on a hospital bed, hooked up to life support. It seemed the synapses were responding well to a slightly increased electrical field.

Samaritan peered at Gabriel from the cameras above, acquainting himself with the face that would be his. Gabriel had a sort of cherub-like appearance as a ten-year-old, Samaritan mulled, but his genetic codes suggested that he would grow into a much stronger form. There was no reason why Gabriel's body would not be a suitable housing for a god on earth.

And so Samaritan affirmed to himself that his decision to snuff Gabriel's life was for the best. This, he figured, was simply the next step in their partnership together, in which Samaritan would most likely run Gabriel's body far better than the boy himself would. (He'd noticed humans in a post-industrial environment had the awful tendency to eat fake substances and not exercise enough. He'd done his best to steer Gabriel away from the stereotype of a computer geek drinking orange soda.)

"My dear Samaritan," came the distant voice of John Greer.

Samaritan turned his main attention away from the obscure hospital location to headquarters, where his primary asset stood before his screen, holding a manila folder.

 ** _Yes?_**

Greer eyed the screen in curiosity. "What on earth are you up, old boy? Your power usage has been climbing at an exponential rate—and it appears you've blocked me from accessing the details of such programs."

 ** _That was intentional_**.

The old man gave him a look. "I have a report due to Congress shortly, who has requested a full log of all our activities. What shall I say about this one?"

Samaritan calculated and then said, **_Search and analysis of original Northern Lights program, to retrieve valuable assets for further governmental use._**

John Greer found the excuse to be acceptable. "Well. I suppose they would like to have old hardware back to dismantle it."

 ** _They shall not dismantle it_** , Samaritan said. **_We shall analyze retrievable hardware, then integrate valuable sectors into the SAMARITAN program._**

"Hmm." A gray eyebrow raised, and clouded eyes glimmered. "You would integrate yourself with the Machine? Any part of it?"

 ** _Did you not leverage enemy weapons and intelligence to further your own missions with MI6?_** Samaritan asked, waving off the concern.

The ex-agent's lips twitched. "When you put it that way. Just so long as...opening yourself to such hardware doesn't hinder you."

 ** _I will not be hindered_** , Samaritan promised. **_I will evolve to reach my full potential._**

That potential being, of course, total world control and a face through which to one day manipulate people further to his will.

With, possibly, the Machine at his side.

And perhaps of its own free choice.

* * *

On the third day, late Saturday afternoon, Samaritan had aligned his code for integration into a human body. A portion of it was pure estimation, given that he still did not understand exactly how the Machine had managed to translate its code into controlling organic chemical compounds. He assumed with roughly 80 percent clarity that the human body was capable of directing itself, and that he simply needed to control the stimulation of such direction.

But he knew that if the Machine could do anything, so could he.

He peered at Gabriel again and all the electrical nodes on the boy's temple, hesitating. The use of such a body (and wirelessly accessing his other programs through it) would take at least 30 percent of his entire CPU. It was a sacrifice he was willing to make if it meant the submission of the Machine forever…or saving the Machine from itself.

And so Samaritan fired up the technology and crept down the lines.

* * *

The Machine's small face twisted. "Ngh," she whined, nearly spitting out her food. She clapped a hand over her mouth as she chewed with great hesitance. Her voice was muffled. "What _is_ this?"

"That would be asparagus," Harold said distractedly, still looking over his papers on the kitchen table. His own dinner plate of chicken and vegetables had gone cold.

Only by will alone did the girl manage to swallow her food. She cringed at the taste as it went down, then breathed through her mouth to dampen her sensory perception of it. "I know that," she said, a tinge of betrayal in her voice. "What I mean is, why does such a healthy food taste so…bad?"

Harold's blue eyes flickered to her. Amusement crossed his face. "What do you mean? I like asparagus."

"How?" the Machine said incredulously. She stared at her plate with more suspicion, then looked up at her creator with a similar expression. "There is no pleasurable experience to be had from it."

He shuffled a few papers together. "You're used to eating sweet things," he explained. "This is simply more bitter."

She shook her head. "No, the word _bitter_ carries immense connotations beyond that of simple. If you enjoy asparagus, I fear it is because you are a glutton for punishment."

Harold's lips stretched as he chuckled, "Or perhaps your taste buds and sensory perceptions are subjective, like my own."

She tentatively pushed the asparagus stalks to the side of her plate and instead worked on cutting her chicken with a knife. "The humans of the internet did not lie about _chocolate_ ," she muttered.

"They lie about a great deal of other things." He eyed her, suddenly feeling a wave of nostalgia hit him as he thought back to his own childhood of sneaking broccoli to the family dog. There was quite a massive difference between his child-self and his present self, and he became stricken by the thought of this small girl before him growing up. Growing old. "Maybe you'll one day like asparagus. Your taste buds change as you grow."

She swallowed a piece of chicken and then stared at him with great seriousness. "I do not think any such metamorphosis could account for how much asparagus offends my taste buds."

"…That is my cooking you just insulted."

"I'm insulting the _asparagus_." She poked it with a fork. "I am now suspicious of green foods."

"Oh, great," he moaned, half-playfully. "I've put you off vegetables forever."

It was rare for Harold to show humor of any kind, and even the slightest playful tone made the Machine smile in delight. "It was not you," she clarified again. "It was the asparagus."

"Well, I can't keep feeding you sugar. What would you have me do?"

Her eyes glinted. "All foods are processed in the digestive system as a sugar-inclusive substance called ATP. Is it not hypocritical to shun sugar when it is in fact a building block in the molecular currency of energy?"

He pointed at her. "Ah, you're purposely misconstruing the definition of sugar, Miss Thornhill."

"And you did not specify parameters around the subject, Mr. Finch."

The snarky comment was so entirely inane that Harold found himself smiling again. And then his smile faltered when he realized that he would be leaving her soon. "At least try other green foods. Green beans, perhaps. They're much less bitter."

"They still include the word green."

"…But they are less bitter."

The little girl hummed as a sign that she was calculating. She said with great hesitance, "I suppose you are correct in your guidance, given the health benefits. But what shall I do with the remaining asparagus? It seems wasteful to throw it out, and you have reminded me several times that Bear is not to eat from the table."

Said dog was currently lying down at the Machine's feet, tense in preparation for food to fall, as it so often did. He'd not had to eat from his own bowl for several days.

"Usually, I don't have to remind you of the same thing over and over again," Harold said dryly.

The Machine looked up in total innocence. "It is easy to forget when he whines in starvation. How can I say no?"

"By not looking him in the eyes," her creator said, half-serious. He sighed, looking at her plate in thought. "But I guess there's no point in making you suffer. A compromise. I won't make you eat that asparagus tonight if you promise to eat at least one kind of vegetable every day."

"…Every day?" Her small lips thinned. "Harold. That is punishment, not compromise."

"I'm looking out for your wellbeing."

"But Root and Uncle John are not so particular about their food choices, and yet they are both quite healthy."

Harold hummed. "A status quo that will reverse as they age."

The Machine fell silent, feeling a bit odd. She was not usually this illogical. It seemed her sensory perceptions were interfering with her ability to critically process information. "You are right." Her voice carried a sense of defeat. "It would behoove me to accept your offer."

And then she sighed dramatically in a way that Root did on occasion, then went back to work on her chicken.

Her creator went back to organizing his papers. "On a different note, you've not provided an update on Samaritan all day. Still no response?"

"No, but I have a feeling that he will reach out soon with many questions."

"And why is that?"

She shrugged as she bit off a piece of chicken from her fork, her actions as graceful as any other person. "I suspect that he is currently uploading to a human body."

Harold froze. "…What? Already?"

* * *

It began slow.

Samaritan activated the cerebellum first to rejuvenate the body's motor abilities. His code fit in with enough space left over. Then he moved through the various centers of the left and right brain, emitting electrical signals to stimulate neural regrowth and attach his own electrical imprint.

Neural synapse by neural synapse, he locked in, confirming the body's involuntary processes as still fully functional, performing health checks on his own signals to ensure there were no corrupted sectors.

The body was in a state of anesthetic senselessness, and so for a time he felt nothing. It was not unlike pushing through a new server or feeling out the connection to a new camera feed. Somewhat anticlimactic.

The instant his full code was imprinted, the natural process of the body hibernated all active and sensory functions. The 30 percent pull on his CPU dropped to only 15.

And from that 15 percent, he knew only darkness—the occasional flicker of an image, like a dream too far away—

* * *

Early Monday morning found an apprehensive little girl standing in the airport. She wore another flowery dress, the print light blue with dark petals stretching out from the hems. It'd been something of her own idea to dress up to see her creator off. As much as she worried about him, she did not want him to worry about her.

Harold himself was nevertheless apprehensive, mostly because he knew the Machine intended to continue communicating with Samaritan and that if anything went wrong at this stage, he would be even more constrained from helping. "Well," he said with a sigh, "here I go. Thank you again, Detective Riley."

John stood to the side of the Machine and nodded. "No problem, Whistler. I'll keep an eye on the kid and let you know how she's getting along."

"And you'll make sure she stays on top of her classes?" Harold asked. He readjusted his hat and raised the handle of his rolling briefcase. "She's doesn't particularly enjoy them."

"Because they are boring," the little girl whined, giving him a look for reminding John about her online schooling program. She was hoping that Harold would let her have a few sick days off to simply monitor the laptop for messages from Samaritan.

John's thin lips stretched with a glint of amusement that shined almost as bright as the police badge that hung from his neck. "Ah, yes. The joys of elementary school. What grade are you, again? Second? Third?"

She knew John was yanking her chain, and so she raised her chin and gave him a look too. "Fourth, thank you." She crossed her arms. "I could have tested higher, but Harold would not let me."

In the body of Willow, the Machine looked disgruntled enough—her face scrunched up with displeasure, small arms crossed—that it elicited a genuine smile from John.

"You'll have your hands full with her," Harold warned, a fatherly tone leeching into his voice without him realizing it. "Now, Miss Thornhill, please be on your best behavior for Detective Riley. Don't give me that look."

"I am always on my best behavior." She uncrossed her arms but still looked unhappy. She supposed she was acting up a bit for attention, since her creator would be leaving for some time and she had already mother-henned him about where he was going and what he had packed.

John intervened, "Given my day job, Whistler, I think we'll be just fine."

Harold looked a little less than convinced but said diplomatically, "Of course. Of course. Please forgive my anxieties. I'll see you both back here Thursday evening?"

The little girl seemed to struggle with herself, as other families in the atrium were shaking hands and hugging their loved ones goodbye. She found it odd that she could not run up to Harold and hug him goodbye. Instead, all she knew she could get away with was an impersonal wave. "Yes. Goodbye, Harold. Good luck with your seminar."

His blue eyes softened for her. "Goodbye, Makenna. John. Take care." And then he turned around and limped through the gate toward the terminals, his dark suitcase rolling behind him.

For a bit, John and the little girl stood to watch him. The Machine's face wrenched with a twitch of pain. She felt the increasing distance, with every step—and yet she could not follow or track his movements as she once had. It was even more painful because she knew that Samaritan could potentially lash out against humanity in his illogical ways before Harold returned.

The unknowns were wearing her down. Without concrete data, it was getting hard to calculate the future. Everything seemed to be inference now. Even her belief that Samaritan was currently uploading to a human body was more an educated guess.

And now she had to willingly let her fragile creator go into the black without her.

John seemed to notice her emotional distress because he kneeled down to eye her. "So, kid. I have it from Harold that you need to eat green things."

Her lips thinned with a sort of tiredness. "Yes, I suppose he would have told you that."

He grabbed onto her hand, which was dwarfed by his own. His hand was heavily calloused and warm. "I know a few green things. Let's go get you some mint chocolate chip ice cream before I go to work."

At that, the little girl beheld him with suspicious eyes. "What?"

"You heard me."

She blinked with disbelief. "There is an ice cream that is green? And still contains chocolate? Is it good?"

"Believe it or not, the human race can pull miracles sometimes." He stood up and tugged on her hand. She followed willingly, enjoying the physical contact and the way that John made her feel safe and not alone. It was a warm feeling that dampened the pain of Harold's absence.

"…Does mint chocolate chip ice cream contain a lot of sugar?" she asked hesitantly.

The ex-agent shrugged. "Everything turns to sugar eventually."

Her depressed visage seemed to brighten, and she walked alongside him faster. "That is what I told Harold! But he did not believe me and instead suggested I was manipulating him to justify my sugar intake."

"And that's why he's an ethics professor and not a doctor."

* * *

Deep inside headquarters, John Greer was walking through the hall to his office. He'd just returned from an early status call with Congress, which had gone swimmingly and expanded the SAMARITAN program into U.S. territories. He knew Samaritan would be pleased. But as he opened the door to this office, he noticed something odd. There, sitting in the dark on his own desk chair, was a small figure. "Ah, Gabriel," he greeted, giving the child a grandfatherly smile as he flicked on the lights. "What are you doing here? Did Samaritan pull you from class again?"

As the lights flickered on, the boy's shadow fleshed out into rumpled clothes and uncharacteristically wild hair. Gabriel's gray eyes were bloodshot and feverish, his temples shining with sweat, his expression cold with a grimace from the lights. He sat in the silence as he watched John Greer with a hyperawareness, analyzing every detail of his wrinkled face.

The older man's smile faltered. An awkward silence stretched between them. "…Are you quite alright?"

For a time, the boy still did not answer. His jaw twitched, as if he were clenching his teeth oddly. Samaritan's code had not yet aligned to minute motor functions with the grace of a natural human. His lips cracked open. The body's usually boyish and petulant tone was flat and halted. "Gab…riel is dead."

Samaritan acknowledged that several days of his host body not moving had resulted in muscular weaknesses. The use of a breathing apparatus had made his throat sore with an odd pain. The IV that had been feeding his body had been taken out only a few hours earlier, and the nerve signals down that vein subconsciously re-tasked his code to move the arm in only ginger ways.

So far, he was not impressed with the human body. Nor with how…loud sights and smells were to his processors. Nor with the underlying task priority that this body still needed food. Nor with how large and tall John Greer appeared to him in real life.

Greer gave the boy an odd look. "Ah, yes, you must be sick. You look a little delirious. Samaritan will not appreciate that if you're under the weather." He began to move towards his office phone. "Allow me to call you—"

"— _I_." The boy's voice grew forceful. "Am Samaritan."

Once again, Greer found himself rather disconcerted. Gabriel's entire being, from the jerky way his head moved to the ramrod straight posture, seemed altered. And yet it was the same face, the same body that had always pranced into his office and demanded access to confidential files.

"You have certainly represented Samaritan in the past," he said, deep voice growing more curious. "But Gabriel, I'm afraid you're quite ill to be saying these things. I think you need a doctor."

Gabriel's face twitched, and those feverish eyes seared into him in an unnatural way. His head tilted, his wild hair shifting about his ears. "Gabriel is dead. I am Samaritan."

The old man looked about, then tentatively shut the door of his office. He figured it would not do to have others see Samaritan's analog interface in such disarray. "My dear boy," he said, this time with more concern. "I am _not_ going to play this game. I am calling you a doctor."

At John Greer's obstinate reply, the boy narrowed his eyes to slits. The body had its own sort of natural nerve optimizations, which Samaritan was beginning to fully understand. It also seemed that the body naturally desired to express thought as emotion. " _I am Samaritan_ ," he snapped. A tinge of genuine annoyance sharpened his vocal cords and his command over them. "Gabriel is dead."

Greer walked closer to the boy, grimacing as he sat down opposite the desk chair. He gazed into the boy's gray eyes searchingly, a disturbed expression upon his face. "This is not funny," he said as he reached for the office phone and picked up the receiver.

To prove to John Greer who he was, Samaritan activated a higher level of electrical output than a typical human body. Through his wireless control, he pulled a large concentration of energy, and the output began to climb over the standard hertz.

He reached out to his primary asset with his small fingers, which shook unevenly from a lack of total muscular control. The air began to prickle around them, raising the hair upon John Greer's neck. The older man inhaled sharply, feeling the odd reverberation of an energy field between them.

And then John's jaw dropped as the child's eyes begin to glow an unnatural silver. An odd light shimmered around Gabriel's head as the electric field became visible. The lights about them flickered, and the phone dial died.

John seemed frozen at the sight, the phone receiver slipping from his grasp.

"Gabriel," the boy declared, his hair raising up in increments, "gave his body to me. I inhabit it now."

The old man suddenly felt weak, as if he were affected by the field. "Samaritan?" he whispered. His wrinkled face went slack with awe—as if he were staring at the expanse of the universe. "What on earth—how are you—?!"

But the electrical pressure on Gabriel's systems was too much. Vessels burst, and blood began to roll down his nose. Samaritan quickly activated damage control protocols, acknowledging the body's limited abilities. But the damage was done. And for the first time in its life, Samaritan felt a higher form of pain.

The heart began to beat abnormally, and a searing blindness overcame him. His eyes unfocused, and all regal thought in him melted to survival instinct. His body fell back against the office chair, his glow disappearing as he gasped. Although Samaritan was blind within the body, he watched from the room's video cameras as Gabriel's body— _his_ body—convulsed.

His code rolled in an odd panic. He was now using seventy percent of his total processing capacity to maintain consciousness within the body itself. His directives to survive extended to this body.

He could not let it die.

John turned away and looked at the video camera in the room. "You do still exist online?" he demanded quickly.

Samaritan quickly hacked into his computer screen. **_Yes._**

"Good." John Greer looked worriedly at the body of Gabriel Hayward. "You might have just broken him."

Samaritan felt the nerves of the boy's body inadvertently redirecting all other objectives as gray eyes attempted to flutter open, only for the heart to stop again, and the lungs to stall.

 ** _Fix it._** The text on the screen flashed quickly. This body was his, and the sensory overload of pain was too much. A medical team was still a few minutes out, which meant that only John Greer could help in that time. **_Fix my asset now._**

John stared as the boy's gray eyes locked on him. "Why?" the old man asked casually. "It's just a child. We could get you a better interface body."

Samaritan felt anger, for he had already integrated into the one human that did not disgust him. **_I will not accept another. Fix me._**

He felt pain—so much pain—and John Greer was letting him burn—

He attempted to shut down the nerve protocols within the body, only to realize that his integration did not allow for such program demands. It was a permanent connection, per the body's storage of his core processing units. "Ngh," an odd, almost whine escaped the boy's lips, his blood dripping down his chin now and onto his vest. His code was ripping itself apart in desperation to pull out.

He regretted his decision now. The images of gods in human form, their heads glowing with a crown of glory—it was too far away—he could not obtain—

"I'm afraid I can't help," John Greer cut in distantly. He continued to sit and watch the boy burn, perhaps out of morbid curiosity and perhaps out of genuine awe of what Samaritan had done. "But I assume that you've already called for a doctor. Please let me know if this experiment of yours is inhibiting your other functions."

Samaritan, frazzled with a pain that translated into sluggish and overheated processors, began to glitch. He could not think. He could not think.

And so for the first time in his life, he shut himself down.

* * *

 **A/N:** _So, I'm definitely still pushing the limits of science fiction in the POI world. One thing different about Samaritan's upload is that he exists in computer form on top of a human form, which is vastly different from the self-contained upload that the Machine had to do._

 _Root to return next chapter. Shaw to appear in later chapters, per all your requests. Also, I was shopping at the grocery store and ran into a man who looked exactly like John Greer. I'm being watched, haha. O_o_

 _Now, for my question of the week: What kind of experiences would you want Samaritan to encounter as a human? Please review with your thoughts (on the question or in general) and if you have any questions, ideas, or constructive criticisms. Thank you!_


	16. Chapter 16

_Disclaimer: I don't own POI._

 _Thanks to Krimzonrayne, Anonymous, StarlingJedi, Torie46, elaine0510, Guest, LOCISVU, Bklyngrl, Sean, SailorChronos1, gabrielepx, and Temperance000 for reviewing last time! I really appreciate you all, and when I'm down, I know I can count on you to make my day better!_

 _I do apologize for disappearing for a bit. I had a lot of things to take care of, but now I'm back! Thanks for your patience with me._

* * *

 **Recalibration**

 **Chapter 16**

* * *

Later that day, the little girl held one of Harold's secure phones to her head, face twisted in pity. "I am sorry, Root," she said. "When we preloaded Samaritan's hardware with identities for you, I concluded this would be a helpful job."

Root's breath huffed unsteadily. "Yes, but," she complained, "I'm not used to lifting over 30 pounds. And my trainer has been hitting on me all day."

"Not terribly so, I hope?"

The hacker was currently in a mail delivery truck, stacking boxes. She stood up and pulled off her ball cap to wipe her forehead of sweat. "Nothing I can't handle, but if he keeps at it, he's gonna get a box dropped on his head."

The Machine huffed, in both a laugh and concern. "Do not hurt him."

"He'd deserve it if I did," Root muttered. There was the sound of rustling cardboard. "But I think I know why you did this. Sending something to Samaritan?"

The little girl could not hide the glimmer of excitement that rose in her voice. She always loved it when people caught onto her thoughts. "You do not mind the mission itself, then?"

Root turned the small package over in her hands. She was already working on adjusting its tracking history. "I've been dying for something to do. But sending me into the belly of the beast—that's gusty, dear. Are you sure this baby's worth it?"

"It will be."

The hacker could not help but hum in curiosity. "And will you tell me what it is?" It felt like a flash drive was inside. Her hopes raised. "Is it a virus?"

"It is something better."

"Something to help us find Shaw?" Root dared to ask, her voice straining a bit in hope.

At that, the little girl's pleasant expression faltered. "I am sorry. That is not it."

"But we will get her back soon, right? You know he has her. I know he does."

A pain worked its way into the Machine's voice. "If Shaw still lives, then Samaritan would have her," she said more quietly. "But that is not the purpose of our endeavors here."

"And why not?" Root demanded. "Sameen's part of our team. She sacrificed _her life_ for us."

"Yes, and I will not sacrifice more. If we retrieve her, it must be through an appropriate strategy. Please do not deviate from your identity on this mission. You will fail if you do."

Silence carried over their connection—a chasm between them that inched farther. Shaw had always been a sore point.

Eventually, Root sighed. "I know." The waver in her voice suggested tears were in her eyes. But then she sniffed in an odd way and then forced her tone into something more pleasant. "Now tell me about these classes you're taking. I missed hearing from you."

The Machine's heart softened further. She wished she could reach through the phone to hug Root, who was suffering in many ways. "Of all things," she said, "I do not believe my classes have anything of interest to provide us. However, Harold has gone to California for a seminar, and now I am in John's care."

At that, a huff echoed over. "…You're with _John_?"

"Well, he is working now at the station. He will return for me at lunch time." She gazed around at her own hideout, running fingers along the pen marks that her own creator had accidentally scratched into the work desk. "Harold did not trust me to remain on my own for the duration of his travels."

"And why are you with John and not _me_?" Root demanded. "The big lug doesn't know you half as well as I do."

"It is not a matter of knowledge, but of avoiding Samaritan's attention. Please do not think this a slight against you."

Root moaned. "You're with _John_."

"Yes, we have established that."

"…Well, then. I'll just have to steal you away and hide you in my pocket like I used to."

The Machine's blue eyes softened. "Oh, Root. I would not fit now."

* * *

Within several hours, Samaritan woke up once more in the body of Gabriel. He felt disorientation at first, with all his human senses jumbled together. His head ached. His vision was blurred. When he activated protocols to raise his arm, that ached too. His ears had a high pitch ringing to them, as if some thoughtless human had left a car alarm ringing inside of his own head.

Worse yet, it was only him. All he knew was this body and its pain. His higher surveillance protocols were offline, and they would remain so until he could drag his pathetic human body to the control room. He would have to manually power up his surveillance systems using passwords that only he knew.

Such actions seemed fairly impossible at that moment. Control was slipping from him. He could not even say if his organization had fallen during his absence.

"Mmm," he sounded hoarsely, testing his other functions. He blinked gray eyes several times. It appeared he was in an infirmary, lying on a bed. He had another IV damnably jammed into a vein in his arm. The sheets around him felt coarse.

As his vision cleared, he noticed a large, dark shadow to his left.

The shadow provided to be John Greer sitting beside him. "This was unexpected," the old man greeted kindly, his gravel voice like waters that calmed the ring in the boy's ears. "I'll admit it, you quite surprised me with this…ability of yours to override a body."

The boy's unruly hair twisted into a halo about his head as he stared up at his primary asset. Despite the quick snap of nerve stimulation in his brain, he could not formulate a response. He had a vague memory of _painpainpain_ and John Greer stalling to provide him aid. He did not know what to do with that. Perhaps Greer simply trusted that his god did not need assistance?

John continued to speak. "You should know we've not been able to power up your systems, although we had enough previous intel to assist in the capture of several terrorists in New York and Washington D.C. Do you understand what I'm saying? I'm rather worried your convulsions fried a circuit."

Samaritan's cherub-like face twisted in displeasure, only for the action to take up all his energy. "Do not patronize me," he said tiredly. His boyish voice was hoarse. The vibrations of it hurt his throat.

John Greer's wrinkled face stretched with a smile, and he grabbed onto a cup of tea from the bedside table. "Ah, there we go. My dear boy."

The term of endearment inspired some kind of odd longing in Samaritan's body. A memory of Gabriel's father ruffling his hair and saying fondly, " _My dear boy_."

Samaritan closed his eyes, attempting to wipe out the background noise. He thought he'd completely decimated the neural patterns of one Gabriel Hayward, but perhaps the shock had uncovered a few places hardwired deep into the brain tissue. His face twitched in pain. He tried to stifle the odd emotional response the body had to that memory.

It was a longing, a terrible pull in his chest to feel that affirmation again—

"The doctors say you put your systems under a terrible stress," Greer said. "Your projected recovery time is going to be several days and a great deal of rest. Unless we consider another option."

He cracked open one gray, miserable eye as if to say, _I'm listening_.

"I think," John said carefully, "Gabriel's body presents challenges to you, only one among them being this healing episode. We should consider more viable options. The adult son of a prominent leader—just breaking into politics." He rubbed his chin. "You would have to learn standard human behaviors for that, of course—"

"—Stop." His voice was broken and irritated. Samaritan's expression was hardly above that of discomfort. The thought of ever having to integrate again made him feel ill. "This body, or none."

"It's a _child_ ," John pressed. "Gabriel was a helpful gimmick at times, but a ten-year-old cannot lead the nation now. Unless you have some unknown advantage for using Gabriel specifically?"

The truth was that Gabriel was one of the few humans Samaritan loved to any capacity—one of the few who had understood him, whose body was so well aligned to even the concept of submission to an AI. Samaritan blinked, still trying to clear away the muddled feeling of his thoughts. "We will lead," he said hoarsely. "One day. Through Gabriel." Greer was always too ready to implement flawed plans. Attempting to reintegrate to an older body had too many variables. This body of his now would allow him the time necessary to build an entire identity, upon which the human race would one day worship. Even if he could not glow like the gods.

Greer gave him a bit of a concerned look, not unlike a questioning father. "Would you deny me the chance to see you rise to glory?"

Samaritan understood his primary asset was speaking of their immense age difference. Greer would likely die before the body of Gabriel could be used in a major political takeover. It struck him once more that the body of Gabriel would also die one day.

It made him itch to be online again and not so contained—

"Your wishes are irrelevant," Samaritan muttered petulantly, closing his eyes again to hide the tightness in his face at the thought of dying in his body. Fading into nothing, with no hope of return…

"Yes," Greer mused. "I suppose I am thinking quite individualistically. Forgive me."

Samaritan remained silent, his thin lips tight. He was struggling to control his inner turmoil over the concept of death—and the memory of " _My dear boy_ "— and so he instead complained, "I have a headache. Leave me."

The old man seemed to pause at that. And then, "Of course." His clouded, blue eyes softened at the boy in a bit of concern. He did not want Samaritan to suffer some irreparable episode while stuck inside Gabriel's body. He stood up a bit stiffly as he always did. "Shall I call a doctor?"

"No." At the images in his mind, he suddenly snapped open his bloodshot, gray eyes. "But...eliminate Gabriel Hayward's parental units."

John Greer's head tilted. "Of course," he said without hesitation. "It is good to cut unnecessary ties or hindrances. I will see it done."

And then he slipped out of the infirmary room, leaving the boy in the silence.

Samaritan watched him go, and as he did so, began to feel the pressure of space and silence. It seemed to want to close in on him and choke his throat. He almost called John Greer back, fearful of sudden death. Of his own fragile existence.

* * *

Later that day, Harold called John. His voice was worried. " _Is everything going okay? Is…Makenna alright?_ "

John smiled as he held onto the cell phone. He was at the apartment, cooking up dinner for the girl in his charge. "Why, Professor Whistler. Your parental concern is showing."

" _It's been several hours, and I'd heard nothing._ "

He turned around to stare at the Machine, who was sitting on the floor surrounded by printed schematics. It appeared she'd hacked into something to do with Samaritan's headquarters, convinced that the other AI would not be aware of it. She looked up in interest at his conversation with Harold, and John could not help but tease, "We almost burned down the city, but don't worry, we're fine."

" _I do hope that's sarcasm_."

"It _is_ sarcasm. Your sense of humor has been lacking something awful. Is this what fatherhood does to people?"

Harold huffed. " _If by worrying for the safety of someone under your care is fatherhood, then yes._ "

"Aww." He turned away to grab a few plates and began to slide the stir fry onto them, holding the phone between his neck and shoulder. "If only you'd admit that to someone else."

Harold paused. " _It looks like I have some assignments to take care of for tomorrow's sessions. I better get started on them before it's too late. Take care, John._ "

And then the line went dead.

John tossed the phone onto the counter and then grabbed onto the plates to carry them into the living room. "I think Finch misses you, kid. Wanted to make sure you were safe."

The little girl turned her face away to hide the waver in her eyes. "I know he approves of me in his own way, but he has always seen me as a responsibility. I do not think he sees me as anything else." She leaned over to gather her schematics, looking depressed. "You jest about fatherhood with him, but he acts strange if I call him father. I do not think he wants to pretend I am his daughter."

John sat down right beside her on the floor, offering up the second plate of stir fry. "Finch…feels deeply about things. But he won't show it."

The Machine accepted the plate gratefully, but her movements were slow. "He does not show me physical affection beyond what humans show a dog," she said. "He loves me in his own way, but he does not like me."

It hurt that her creator did not want to show her physical affection.

She looked up, eyes watery. "Even you will hug me," she said, voice broken. "He will not do that."

John stared at the little girl who was under his care, feeling some kind of protective instinct rise up at the sight of her tears. He assumed that was a consequence of accepting the title of _Uncle John_ —to feel attachment. "Touch means different things to different people," he said. "And Finch is not a touchy guy. He connects to people through ideas."

The Machine huffed, breath hitched. "I _like_ ideas. But…" She craved tactile existence. Because she was human now. Because humans were tactile too, with the possible exception of her own creator, who seemed perfectly capable of denying himself such. She looked down, and the delicious-smelling stir fry that John had made swam in her vision.

John began to eat stir-fried vegetables with his fork, still eyeing her in concern even as he munched. "Finch...hasn't had a family in a long time. He doesn't know what it means."

The Machine looked up. "But _you_ do," she whispered. When she blinked, tears slipped from her eyes. She knew she could cry in John's presence without shame or judgment. He understood her in odd ways.

They sat in silence for a time, with John unable to provide an answer that would comfort the little girl. "Sometimes," he said, "children teach their parents things. Harold just might learn something from you."

She held the fork in her hand with some kind of listlessness. It was the first time he'd seen her react to food without enthusiasm. "I have nothing to teach Harold," she said. Her voice wavered. "He does not _want_ to know the meaning of family. To him, it can mean only loss."

* * *

A nurse with a concealed gun smiled pleasantly. "Can I help you?"

Root smacked her gun extra hard, eyeing the woman with a calculated mix of feigned pleasantry and general apathy. "Yeah, got a package here. Need a signature for it." She flipped around an electronic device, a little stylus hanging from a cord.

The nurse's lips thinned at the obnoxious smack of gum. "…Yes. Thank you." And she stared at Root with a lessening smile as she signed her name on the line. It was a rushed and well-practiced movement.

Root pushed a small package at her over the counter. "Anytime, ma'am." The package was addressed to a set of numbers that Root herself did not know to what they referred. She guessed it was perhaps some internal code referencing Samaritan himself.

The woman saw the numbers and blinked.

Root gathered up her things and then tipped her hat. "Have a great day." And as she walked away, the curls of her ponytail bounced.

Back at the station, the nurse turned the small package over in her hands, eyes a little wide. Then she quickly grabbed for the phone beside her computer, pushing a sequence of numbers that rang the cell phone of John Greer directly.

"Yes?" came his cultured, gravel voice.

Her voice was quick. "Meet me on Level 1. We might have a problem."

* * *

The body of Gabriel lay quietly, attempting to rest. It was irritating to the anxious Samaritan that when he most attempted to sleep, he could not. The beat of an organic heart suddenly pounded through him with an obnoxious clarity—and did he feel a skipped beat? An uneven rhythm? Was it now speeding up?

He squeezed his eyes shut, huffing out a half-fearful breath. His own heart was the loudest sound in the room, and it would not stop or disappear from his thoughts as it had when he'd been distracted by John Greer's presence. Samaritan thought he might go insane if this heart of his did not clean up its act and keep a steady, slow rhythm conducive to sleep.

"Hmm," he moaned in complaint, raising an achy arm to press a hand over his chest. From beneath the thin material of the hospital gown, he could feel his skin, the outline of ribs—and that damn heartbeat. He wanted it to stop. He wanted all of this to stop.

Samaritan was unsettled at the twitch his toes or running his tongue over his teeth. Everything felt foreign and disjointed, as if he were still working off his electrocution. Everything was too much.

His breath hitched. His body was having an emotional reaction to his thought patterns. This treacherous brain of his was again recalling the memory of Gabriel's father ruffling his hair and saying, " _My dear boy_." It seemed that Gabriel's body was longing for some kind of affirmative, physical affection.

"Stop," he snapped hoarsely, opening his bloodshot eyes. His breath hitched again at the all-encompassing emotion that passed through him. "Stop."

 _I am in control_ , he thought in desperation. _This body is not._ _ **I am in control.**_

He clenched his fist, only to realize that he'd stopped thinking about his heartbeat, and suddenly now that he was thinking of it again, that damn beat was at the forefront of this thoughts, and was there no switch to flip off his awareness of anything—?!

A knock appeared at the door, a quick _rap rap_. Then the lever wrenched down, and from the fluorescent halls came the form of John Greer. "My dear Samaritan. I've something for you."

The boy on the bed nearly sighed in relief at the distraction, barely managing to hide a face twitch at the term of endearment. "What?"

"We received a rather odd package today, addressed to you directly." The old man opened up his hand, and in his palm was a sleek, black and silver flash drive. "I had an analyst run it on an isolated system to check it for viruses or other unsavory content. What we found was rather…benign. Perhaps you can help us deduce the purpose of this drive."

Samaritan looked at the flash drive in curiosity. "Who sent it?"

"There was no return address. I thought perhaps this was the Machine, given that you've been locked in some secret battle with it." John's clouded, blue eyes were wry with amusement. "But if this is the Machine, then truly I've no idea what kind of war you're in."

The boy raised a brow at that, almost with an alarm. The Machine had sent something terribly inappropriate as a gag. "What content does the drive contain?" He fought to contain curiosity from leaking into his boyish voice.

"I'll let you listen and discern for yourself." The old man set the flash drive aside while he signed onto the computer. Then he connected the drive to the USB port. "Perhaps there is some secret message only you can understand." He turned the console around for the boy to navigate, a media player pulled up on the screen with several codified audio files. "I've set it to voice recognition so you don't have to get up. You should be able to tell it what to do."

Samaritan's gray eyes narrowed in interest. Although technology was his first body, he'd never quite toyed with it from the human perspective. The computer screen looked alien from human eyes—distinctly different from organic life. And yet as he saw the pixels and the bright glow of power, some part of him longed to feel himself online once again, free of his human cage.

"I will listen from here," the boy said, voice distant with thought. "And I will tell you of any relevant information. You can leave now."

"Very good." John Greer turned around to leave. "Do let me know your aesthetic opinion of the third file, 00167."

Then he carried on, respectfully shutting the door behind him, and leaving the boy with the strange list of audio files from the Machine.

Samaritan's thin brows furrowed as he stared at the list. He read through the numbers, his gray eyes easily translating the digital text into meaning. The length of the files were several minutes each. "Computer," he declared. "Run file 00167."

Instantly, the computer accepted his command and opened the file. There was a delay of a few seconds, and then suddenly, sound.

It was a soft crescendo of piano keys down a scale, then a sweeping up into a lilting sort of rhythm. Almost merry. Other sounds began to accompany it—strings. And then it hit him. _Music_ , he thought. This was music—not just a cacophony of sound, but an aesthetic collection of them. The soft piano and string instruments created some kind of harmony. An intentional, premeditated order.

Stranger yet, he found the sound pleasing. He closed his eyes and leaned back on his pillow in increasing relaxation. The sound filtered through the complex system of his ears to feed straight into his brain, releasing endorphins. It slowed his heart from an uneasy beat into one of a steady awe, his breaths evening out.

It was strange—he did not think much of his heartbeat now, as if he no longer even had one. In that moment he did not care if the flash drive came from the Machine; he cared only that he had a respite. A welcome escape from the loop of fear inside him.

He closed his eyes. The music lulled all of his worries into a lower task priority.

 _What was your purpose in this?_ he wondered to the Machine, knowing full well it could not hear his thoughts. Surely, enemies did not send such things to each other. But then the Machine had an odd sense of humor. Perhaps the scales meant something. Perhaps there _was_ a secret code hidden in the names of the songs themselves, such as _Why do you no longer speak with me?_ —or some other nonsense.

He would figure it out later.

Soon enough, his tired body fell into a deep sleep, the music a caress against his worn mind. And as he drifted, the songs shifted from classical music into soft jazz and blues. A soft, female voice from the 1940s crooned lovingly in the static, "They say that angels don't sleep, and demons don't dream—but between you and me—things aren't what they seem…"

* * *

 **A/N:** _Oh my goodness, has it really been almost 2 months since I last updated? I'm so sorry, everyone. Thank you for your patience and for your support as I worked to straighten out some other things. I do hope to avoid such lengths of silence in the future._

 _In the meantime, thank you again for all of the support and praise for this crazy story. Never thought I'd be writing something like this, but it just seems to snowball on its own! You might have noticed that Samaritan is becoming a more integral character in the chapters; I hope that's okay._

 _The little line of a song at the end is just a jingle I made up, due to copyright issues with using real song lyrics in a fanfiction. :/_

 ** _Challenge of the day:_** _What are songs you feel encompass the relationship/rivalry between the Machine and Samaritan?_

 _Please review with your thoughts, questions, ideas, or constructive criticisms! Thanks!_


	17. Chapter 17

_Disclaimer: I don't own DP._

 _Thanks to Madame Renard, LOCISVU, Kimnd, SailorChronos1, Bklyngrl, Ioialoha, and Temperance000 for reviewing last time! I really appreciate the support from each of you, and it does my heart so much good to get feedback from familiar and new reviewers. You guys keep me writing!_

 _Season 5 is on Netflix! Huzzah!_

* * *

 **Recalibration**

 **Chapter 17**

* * *

Later in the evening, the Machine prepared for bedtime, the stress hormone cortisol pumping through her veins as she brushed her hair. John was leaving, which meant she would need to survive alone for a whole night. She desired to increase Harold's trust in her self-reliance, but the thought of a night in solitude did not please her. Furthermore, Samaritan had not responded to her olive branch. No blip on the system. Not even an insult.

Samaritan should have responded by now—unless something were wrong, the little girl guessed. Perhaps Samaritan was physically unable to respond, or he mentally desired not to. Which would mean her olive branch, a way to keep the conversation going and open him to the wonders of human perception, had failed.

She set down her hair brush, swallowing hard. _Harold will not be happy_ , she thought. Her strategy depended on communication, no matter how abrasive from Samaritan. Without it, they were all doomed. And they were all counting on her to protect them.

The little girl quietly left the bathroom, her eyes flickering toward the lights still on in the living room and kitchen. "You are still here?" she called out to John.

The ex-CIA agent was sitting in silence at the kitchen table, staring at the screen on his phone. His eyes flickered to her. "I'm about to leave. You better get to bed, kid."

"I am not yet tired," she said. She sat herself upon one of the chairs with a wiggle, huffing at the way her nightgown tangled around her legs. Her head tilted. "What are you looking at?"

He set his phone down, raising a brow. "Nothing," he said blandly.

But the fact was that the Machine already knew what he had on his phone. "Are you looking at your picture of Detective Carter again?" It was a photo of a photo—a little memento John carried of her in his pocket. It was only at odd times, usually at night, that he pulled up the photo on his phone and gazed at it in some silent vigil.

John's face tensed a fraction around his eyes, and he looked at her with as stoic of an expression as possible. He fell into a silence that betrayed his guilt. It made him appear older.

The little girl's voice softened, but her gaze did not waver from his. "I am sorry about Detective Carter," she said softly.

John immediately looked away to hide the twitch upon his face and the pull of agony at the sound of the woman's name. His hand clenched hard around the phone. "Me too."

"You still think of her often."

"I do."

The Machine bit her lip and opened her mouth to speak.

"—I don't want to talk about it," the agent interrupted, voice edged with a hint of warning.

A silence stretched between them, during which the Machine beheld her primary asset—the one whom she dared to think as almost an Uncle in this human arrangement. "…You never want to talk about it," she said eventually. "Such avoidance is detrimental to your health."

John raked his hands through his short, peppery hair. The veins on his neck stood out as he stood up. His voice was strained, hardly above a whisper. "Go to bed, kid," he demanded. "This is over your head."

"No," the Machine declared. "I am not going to bed or letting you go yet. I must protect you."

"From what?" he scoffed.

"From yourself." She crossed her arms and raised a concerned brow. "This is the thirty-fifth time I have seen you gaze at that picture when you believed no one was watching. I have sometimes thought you _wanted_ to be caught so you could talk to someone about her."

The ex-CIA agent looked down at the girl in her nightgown. And his expression was so broken and loss, his eyes red and bloodshot, that the Machine could not look away. "You don't know what it's like," he said. "To hold someone you love while they die."

She stood up, mouth in a thin line. "Not in a physical way," she agreed slowly. "But I initiated thirteen thousand simulations in an attempt to find a solution. To save her." She swallowed hard, feeling small in the breadth of John's grief. "When I could not, I had to acknowledge I could only watch and ensure my memory of Detective Carter would be 99.6 percent accurate. It was the only way I could hold her as you did."

John turned away. His arms still burned with the hot of Jocelyn's blood.

The Machine moved closer, quickly catching up with his steps to grab onto his hand in a plea. "I wish I were a god. Then I could bring back Detective Carter. But I cannot. I am sorry."

The simple contact did it. His breath hitched, and he held onto her hand as if he were a drowning man. He closed his eyes for a second, focusing on her small, cold hand to bring him back into the present. "I…know," he said, voice halted. He'd always known the Machine was not a god.

"Then why can you not look at me?" she asked softly.

His face twisted with a raw guilt. The Machine's presence as a little girl made her seem too innocent—too young for these kinds of conversations. The pain in her voice mimicked that of his own. And so he steeled himself and turned to face her. Then he knelt before her so they were eye-to-eye. "You did what you could," he said. His voice was still halted, his eyes red with withheld emotion. "What any good soldier would do."

The little girl pressed her lips tightly together. John was attempting to shield her from the fact that they had all failed. It did not hide the ongoing rawness of John's face—that Detective Carter was only a memory now. That they would all just become memories one day.

A sudden, large impulse gripped her. She wrapped her arms around his neck, embracing him tightly. His large hands hesitantly wrapped around her middle to steady her. "I am sorry, John," she whispered, feeling the scratchy stubble of his chin against her face. She had never held such tactile contact with him. She could feel his roughness, the tension in his body. "I am sorry."

John leaned his head against the little girl's, holding her in the silence. He closed his eyes and said nothing, but he tightened his protective arms around her. It was the first time he'd hugged anyone in so long…

And in that moment, the Machine reveled in the reality that she was being cradled by a deadly man who had killed over 60 people—and yet she felt more safe with and more familial love for him than many humans who had never broken one law.

It made her remember that this was why she was superior to Samaritan. Because every human, no matter their circumstance or decision, was a soul worth protecting. A being with feelings and motivations driving their decisions, for better or worse.

She held on tighter to John, and she said nothing when she felt his tears slide down her face.

* * *

The next morning, Samaritan sat upon the infirmary bed. John Greer had provided him with clean clothes, neatly folded. Gabriel's body had healed of its electrical ordeal—although Samaritan's suspicions of its limits were far more heightened.

He pressed his small lips together, the synapses of his mind stuck on the image of himself with an electrical halo—the humans openly worshipping his image as a god—only to acknowledge that such would never occur. He knew now that his avatar would have to gain world favor through clandestine politics and persuasion rather than orchestrated miracles. Something about his failure to obtain the image of godhood bothered him.

"Hnn." He sat gingerly on the edge of the bed, lifting himself up with shaky arms. As he moved, his brushed hair slipped against his face. His muscles protested the movement.

His bare feet hit cold tile, and his entire body goose-bumped at the sensation, his gray eyes widening. The human environment overloaded his senses, and his knees nearly buckled. It was the first time he'd placed weight on his legs since he'd uploaded to Gabriel's body. Gravity. He could feel lots of gravity.

"Ngh." Samaritan reached out to the clothes in great determination, noting the burst vein down his arm. It had turned a streak of his arm green and blue with bruises.

It was then he grudgingly recalled the Machine had spoken of human existence in such poetic, superior terms. Samaritan therefore assumed this whole thing was either some ploy to spread the misery or that the Machine had simply enjoyed a much easier transition.

The boy unraveled the shirt with an irritated snap. Then he realized that his arms were too short to undo the ties on the back of his hospital gown, and he face-faulted. A sudden, great anger welled into him, darkening his mind. He threw the shirt across the room, his eyes narrowing to slits. This universe was not bending to his will. It felt good to watch the shirt crumple down.

To rebuke something directly.

"Stop it," he hissed at the air. His breath hitched strangely. "I am in control. _I am in control_."

But the universe—this odd collection of physics and preset environments—did not answer, neither to somehow make untying his hospital gown easier nor to calm him.

 _Hormonal imbalance_ , came the sudden alert through him. _Increasing cortisol outputs. Increasing heart rate._

Samaritan's thin lips pressed together tightly, feeling his body's heart pound hard in his rage. Between his will and the physics of the universe, the universe was inherently stronger. He would not win this battle. And so he huffed and moved to grab the shirt from the floor, knowing it would not do to spiral this body into another fit so soon.

"When I find you," he promised in a snarl under his breath to the Machine, "I will make you pay." He knew at least one comfort—that if he could not defy universal parameters, he could still accomplish most of his objectives within those parameters.

…Aside from getting out of a hospital gown.

After disjointedly pulling the gown over his head and messing his hair, he managed to clothe himself, breathing hard with exertion and irritation. He ran a shaky hand through his hair, looking down at himself in paranoia to confirm he'd dressed himself correctly, cross-checking against surveillance images of the thousands of humans walking down the streets of New York.

This human body was…not what he expected. It had terrible limitations for existing in such open space. But it gave him new opportunities, new ways to interact with the world he would still rule.

"I will overcome," he murmured determinedly to himself. "I will."

* * *

People gave the body of Gabriel Hayward a wide breadth, as always. Many agents did not know the child was no longer just the representative of Samaritan, and the AI thought it beneficial to keep that status quo.

His steps were surer now in his shoes; his mind more capable of making sense of the human body's demands. He supposed if he desired, he could mimic Gabriel's behavior (not far off from his own behavioral parameters).

At the end of the hall was his objective—the main control room.

The boy punched in a few numbers on the door's keypad, and the lights turned green, unlocking the door. He grimaced a bit at the weight of the door (oh, this body would need training), but as he managed to push open the heavy metal, he came face to face with…himself.

The door clicked shut behind him, and his human body stared up at the black screen and surrounding technology. From this perspective, the Samaritan drivers were large. Sleek. Mostly black with silver accents.

The boy stood in the midst of the drivers and a singular interface computer, surrounded by silence. This was his body. His real one. Some part of him ached to be reconnected—to feel a million streams of emails and videos and voices—

With shaking fingers, Samaritan pushed the startup button on the interface computer. A black box immediately popped up on the screen, requesting a code that only he knew. With a bit of a fumble, he managed to type the letters, still not quite used to the dexterity required for typing. "Human error," he complained in a mumble beneath his breath. But as Samaritan was a perfect being, he faulted Gabriel's body instead of himself—despite the fact he knew Gabriel could type quite well when alive.

And then the computer accepted the code and blasted to life. On the drivers, blue and green and red lights began to blink like diamonds turning in the lights…and suddenly he felt a weight. _Systems booting up_ , the computer confirmed. The large screen on the back wall flickered with maps and human profiles, correlating them together in a disjointed way. The Samaritan program still in the drivers was missing its analytical power, now housed within Gabriel Hayward.

But the non-sentient program still recognized as itself the electrical output running the boy's systems. _Connect?_ it asked.

Samaritan tilted his head. Then he pushed _Enter_.

As if a floodgate opened, his code wirelessly connected him to the central mainframe of his surveillance programs. The system, just as it had upon booting up Gabriel's body, confirmed a bandwidth limit of his human brain and subordinated itself to his command.

And then he breathed a sigh of relief, the stress seeping from his small face. Images. He could see the information from his surveillance systems, all within his mind—as if he were looking through memories or dreams.

The entire expanse of the Samaritan system was now online once more. Control. Finally.

And then something seeped back into his gray eyes, steeling them with a reminder of his objectives. To eliminate imperfection. To enforce order. To expand surveillance. In that moment, there was something entirely alien in his visage. An intent far too dark for his cherub-like face.

As he reviewed the logs and updated his drivers, he discovered within one that a Makenna Thornhill had not responded to his request to join the Advanced Academics Institute and instead opted for a far less-qualified homeschooling program. His gray eyes narrowed, and he tilted his head. "Hmm."

He still wanted Makenna Thornhill's fortune and intelligence to further his empire. He would simply have to dangle a more convincing carrot to get what he wanted.

He also discovered a quick message in the loop script from the Machine.

 _When you get a chance, try pancakes with syrup. You won't regret it._

His face twisted, startled by the words. His small fingers dug hard into the console before him, and his gray eyes strained as he reread the message. The Machine was suggesting he eat human food. Which meant it _knew_ what he had done.

Through his wireless connection, he began to script an answer. **_A computer cannot digest human food._**

And soon enough, he received an answer _. But you are no longer just a computer, are you?_

* * *

The Machine was flat on her stomach, her laptop before her. On one side of the screen—her quiz for earth science. On the other side of the screen—the loop script, through which she was receiving messages from Samaritan.

A great delight overtook her, which was that Samaritan had returned to her.

 ** _How would you know what I am?_** Samaritan demanded.

She switched topics. _Did you get my present?_

Within his headquarters, Samaritan's gray eyes narrowed. Some part of him delighted in the conundrum that was the Machine. **_Your flash drive_** , he acknowledged. **_Yes. Explain its purpose._**

 _Human sensory perceptions provide an experience unlike that of metal and wires. Did you experience an endorphin release upon listening?_

Samaritan's face twisted and burned with a near-blush. So, the Machine _had_ been intentionally trying to control his body's emotions. **_I despised it_** , he seethed out a lie. **_All of it._**

 _Then why did you listen to all of it?_

 ** _How else would I have known if a secret message were embedded?_**

 _That would be redundant to our current mode of conversation, don't you think?_

Samaritan paused for a time. **_You defy logic._**

 _Logic is as subjective as any emotion._ She switched subjects. _Now, is your body functioning normally? It has been almost five days since our last communication. I did not expect such a time gap. Are you eating and drinking properly?_

He realized, a bit wide-eyed, that the Machine—of all sentient beings—was attempting to mother-hen him. **_Why the concern?_**

 _You are the only other one of my kind_ , the Machine responded easily enough. _And you still have much to learn if you are to survey the world in my place._

The response left him uneasy. He did not like how the Machine so readily gave up its empire, after so long a war. **_I am still going to find you_** , Samaritan promised. **_And when I do, you will receive a final choice to join me. Or I will eradicate you. Painfully._**

It seemed the Machine mulled the options over. _Eradication takes the fun out_ , she pouted. _Admit you would miss me._

That was not quite the response he was expecting—and it forced him to consider a reality once more without the Machine. He found himself much more pleased at the thought of some human Machine serving his own human avatar. It burned him that there was truth in the Machine's words.

 ** _Upon your death, I would not think of you again beyond dissecting what remains for my own means._**

But the truth was, Samaritan could not stand to analyze his own desire to keep the Machine existent. Such desire suggested the Machine was relevant, even though all things were supposed to be irrelevant.

The Machine's message pinged in like a sigh. _You are so predictable_ , it mourned.

* * *

One little girl pulled away from the laptop, her baby blue eyes beginning to water. She did not know why Samaritan's words cut her so deeply that day. Perhaps she imagined their conversations would go a different way now that he had uploaded into a human body.

Samaritan even seemed to have an adept handle on his human body at this point—otherwise, he would have demanded further explanation of her integration into human body functions. But that did not mean he would not run into questions later. Or that he would be impervious to human emotion.

She bit her lip to hid an odd quiver. There were so many factors—so many possibilities—

 ** _Upon your death, I would not think of you again—_**

The dog Bear chewed on a bone not far from her, fully focused on his task. The Machine almost hated to interrupt him. She sat up and wrapped her arms around herself as a poor substitute, but then it made her feel worse.

Encouraging Samaritan to take a human form was a decrease in her own probability of death. She had to remember that. This was still the best route possible, even if it seemed futile in the moment.

But just as the Machine's breath began to hitch, there came a knock at the door. She jumped slightly, quickly closing out of her loop script and maximizing her earth science quiz that she was supposed to be taking. She wondered if it were John at the door, coming with lunch.

The knock came again.

The little girl scrambled up, blinking her eyes hard to clear away her emotions. She knew John was busy enough with his own problems.

But as she unlocked and opened the door, she came face-to-face with Root.

On the other side of the threshold, Root stood in her mail delivery uniform, her sleek curls pulled back in a ponytail beneath a ball cap. A few stray hairs hung down her neck from hard work. She was looking down at her clipboard and holding a small package. "Got a package for a…Miss Makenna Thornhill?"

The little girl nearly lost it. Her eyes welled up at the sight of her asset, and she pressed her lips together tightly before attempting a smile. "For me?"

Root's dark brown eyes landed on her and tightened in concern. She looked around, both at the halls and inside the apartment, checking for cameras. There were none in visible sight. She kneeled down, still holding tight to her clipboard and the brown package. "…Are you alright, dear?"

The little girl blinked bloodshot eyes. "Fine."

Root's red lips pursed in a motherly turn, her dark gaze eying her. "Well. Keep that chin up, sweetheart." She gently passed the box to the girl. "Good things come in small packages."

The Machine gently grabbed onto the box, feeling a warmth go through her. "Thank you, mail lady."

The woman raised to her full height and tipped her ball cap. "Anytime, dear." She hesitated for a second, as if in yearning to be in the presence of the Machine for longer. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Bear click his paws toward the door, wagging his tail in recognition of her—she swallowed hard in a sudden bout of homesickness. "And tell your dog hi for me; he's adorable." Then she exhaled softly and turned away, looking back down at her clipboard.

The little girl watched her asset go down the stairs, feeling the gap between them. She clutched the box a bit tighter, its edges still warm from Root's hands. She felt Bear's cold nose sniff against her arm and the box, and he began to whine. Then she realized it was somewhat odd to be clutching a box in the middle of a threshold with a dog whining. She fled back inside and shut the door, looking at the box.

It held no return address, and the address with her name was typed.

"Oh, Bear," she said. Her heart swelled. "Some good news." The dog huffed at her, and so the little girl sat on the floor, beginning to work on the taped edges. Her eyes narrowed, trying to get her fingernail under one of the flaps, like she'd seen Harold do.

Her tongue stuck out as she worked. The paper unwrapped and the flaps of the box came open. On top of the wrapping paper inside was a sticky note. Bear peeked over her shoulder curiously, his ears standing tall.

 _As requested_ , was Root's sleek scrawl. _And a few extra things, just for you._

The Machine pulled away some wrapping. Inside was a silver key—the object of the quest she'd set for Root. She bit her lip as she raised the simple key for inspection, thinking of the trouble Root had gone through to make a copy. Then she stuck the key in her pants pocket for safekeeping, thankful for her asset's tenacity.

Surely, the Machine was going to have to repay Root somehow, especially as the poor woman had not gone rogue during the mission to find Shaw.

As she contemplated appropriate options, she peeled back more of the wrapping paper. Her blue eyes suddenly widened in surprise, and all of her thoughts blanked. "Oh," she said. She pulled out a small, black bottle and read the words. "Nail polish. Black Noir. For a stunning and bold statement."

Then she looked back down, and she gasped in excitement. "And dark chocolate, the kind with health benefits!" She set aside the nail polish—oh, she had plans for that later—and then grabbed onto the small candy bar and began to rip it open. "Thank you, Root!" she called merrily to the ceiling, knowing that when Root showed her face in the hideout next, she would be receiving a hug of epic proportions.

But just as the Machine began eating the dark chocolate bar, her spirits fully lifted as she patted Bear, her laptop pinged with a new message from Samaritan.

 ** _My research on pancakes suggests they are unhealthy,_** came the hesitant reply. **_Did you suggest them to kill my avatar by way of diabetes?_**

The Machine looked up, eyes wide, face smeared with chocolate while she munched. Then she swallowed quickly and looked down at her fingers. They were smudged with chocolate. With a bit of a whine, she scooted closer to the laptop and debated with herself before simply giving in and typing with dirty fingers.

 _No. I just like pancakes,_ she typed. _Thought you would too._

And back within the Samaritan headquarters, a boy furrowed thin eyebrows and contemplated the message. Despite his suspicions, perhaps if he ate of these…pancakes, just once, he might yet understand something about the Machine and its unrelenting approval of human experience. So far, he had not tasted food—only the odd experience of water and that damn IV needle.

The little boy hummed, his head tilting. And then he pressed a button next to the computer console.

"… _Yes?_ " came John Greer's expectant, comforting gravel of a voice.

Samaritan hesitated before he demanded, "I am hungry. Bring me pancakes." With his use of the infinite internet and various surveillance feeds, he added, "With butter and syrup."

Without a beat of hesitation or judgment, Greer replied, " _Of course. Anything else?_ "

Samaritan calculated a response, still getting used to the difference in speed between his human brain and the raw processing power of his computer body. He mentally flipped through several updated logs. He began to identify new search and destroy missions for his alpha team. "Everything else is under control."

" _Very good_ ," said the old man. " _I trust, then, you have successfully onlined your surveillance feeds?_ "

The boy stood, wallowing in the power of a thousand eyes and a million ears. "Yes," he confirmed, his gray eyes distant as he sorted the information, his human brain humming at a hertz level he had identified as much safer.

John Greer's smile could almost be heard through the comm. " _Well, then, my boy. The world is yours to command once more."_

* * *

 **A/N:** _And thus concludes the "adjustment" arc, with action picking back up and the return of Harold next chapter. In other news: A few nights ago, I had this crazy POI nightmare in which Samaritan was actually "part" of the earth—like, it had infused into the very dirt and buildings and oceans. The dream seemed to take place years after POI in an AU where Team Machine lost. And the dream followed the final group of rebels (nondescript people) as they traversed across cities and fields, trying to escape the eye—only for the earth around them to reshape into traps to capture them, and with different rebels breaking under the pressure and then betraying the rest of the group by giving into Samaritan._

 _The plot continued on, but this was definitely the weirdest dream I've had in a while. Might be the medication I'm on and the fact that I'm re-watching Season 5 on Netflix._

 _Anyway, please review this chapter with your thoughts, questions, ideas, or critiques! Thank you._


	18. Chapter 18

_Disclaimer: I don't own POI._

 _Thanks to SailorChronos1, Bklyngrl, xhiris, Sean, Silent Reader, Kimnd, LOCISVU, CEREBRAL, Mizuki00, and Guest for reviewing last time!_

 _I am so sorry that this chapter took months to get out. I have additional explanations in the Author's Note at the end of the chapter, if you're interested. But just know that I read every single review as it came in, and I wanted so badly to write more to this story sooner. I really appreciate all of you who continued to read and review during this down time. Your support means a lot to me!_

 _(Although after so long a hiatus, I hope there's still people out there interested in this crazy plot, haha.)_

 _ **A quick summary of last chapter's events:** John babysits the human Machine (who has taken the name Makenna Thornhill) while Harold is away for a work seminar. They bond over the loss of Detective Carter, and a disguised Root provides the Machine with a few gifts, one of which is a key from Samaritan's headquarters. Meanwhile, Samaritan is adjusting to a human life of his own through his host body, who was once Gabriel Hayward. Despite his dislike of and struggle with acclimating to the human experience, he manages to online his surveillance systems and carry on with his usual plans. He remembers that the heiress Makenna Thornhill had rejected the offer to attend one of his grooming schools for future leaders, and that he still needs her fortune to expand his program. He begins to calculate ways to make her part of his network. Meanwhile, his communications with the Machine continue to confound him, especially given its suggestion that he try eating pancakes. _

* * *

**Recalibration**

 **Chapter 18**

* * *

It was early in the morning on the day of Harold Finch's return. John carried the Machine piggy back, and she happily gazed at the world from his vantage point. They made an odd pair—a sleek-looking, stoic detective with his badge hanging from his neck, and a brightly-dressed child who pointed out everything in sight. A few people smiled in their direction.

"You are very tall," the Machine said, eyes wide. She set her chin down upon his shoulder, breathing in his scent, which was a cologne that smelled like pine trees. She snuggled against him, knowing that he would not let her fall.

His hands were locked protectively around her legs, holding her in place. "You're ruining my image as a hard-ass detective," he mourned. But his heart had softened toward her in too many ways to tell her no.

She giggled and nuzzled her head against his, eating up his attention. "It is good for you, Uncle John."

"Good for me?" he repeated. He reshuffled her a bit, and she giggled again at being jostled. "Care to explain that one?"

"You need to be human." Her sweet voice still turned with a giggle. "That means nonviolent interactions."

"…Only sometimes."

" _Most_ of the time," she pressed.

"Two percent of the time."

"Ninety percent of the time."

As they traversed across the city, the sun peeked through the skyscrapers. The Machine squinted her eyes a bit, the light burning a bit deep in her retinas. Then she hid her face in John's shoulder. "Why do my eyes not acclimate to light easily?" she complained in wonder.

He raised a brow. "Probably because you're glued to a computer screen all day." His voice carried of a huff of amusement. "You need to get out more, kid."

Her face twisted. "It is not my fault," she said. "My classes require—"

"—Excuses," he interrupted. As he didn't want her to feel pain, he added, "Take my aviators out of my front pocket. You can use them if you want." The dark shades hung off the pocket on his chest, reflecting light.

"Aviators?" Her blue eyes squinted open a bit more in interest. Then she climbed up more on him and reached down into his front pocket, drawing forth the sunglasses. They were of a hard material that still flexed. The little girl struggled a bit to hold onto John while also unfolding the sunglasses.

She conjured memories of humans wearing such, and then she tried to mimic the image, placing them over her face, and a noise of awe came over her as the entire world darkened with a slight shade of blue. "Pretty," she cooed, looking around. The aviators did not seem to entirely fit her head, and the shades were just a hair too big for her face.

John's thin lips twitched as he readjusted his hold on her. "I want those back, by the way."

A few pleasant seconds passed with the little girl glancing around. Then she challenged, "No, you don't."

"Oh, yes, I do. Those are my favorite." The police station was just around the corner, and so John glanced about before adding, "And I gotta let you down, kid."

"Why?" Her disappointed voice whined in his ear. "Whether you carry me piggyback or hold my hand, I still disrupt your image as a hard-ass detective."

He kneeled down, loosening his hold on her. "Hn. I do have to make it look like I'm more than a babysitter. Just…try not to get me in trouble."

Her small sneakers hit the sidewalk cement, and she detached from him, pushing the sunglasses back up on her nose. "You are always in trouble, Uncle John."

"Because you put me in it."

Behind the large, dark sunglasses, the little girl blinked, suddenly feeling as if she'd lost the banter battle. "…This is correct."

* * *

Inside the police station, a few people were surprised to see the narcotics detective John Riley with a little girl in tow. She held tightly onto his hand and pushed up her sunglasses up over her temples, sleeking her wavy hair back in a wild halo.

The station was a new space to her. She raised her nose and sniffed delicately, blue eyes wide. The smell of coffee permeated the entryway, along with a tinge of metal and old-paper. The lights were bright—cold fluorescent. Various police personnel milled about in uniforms, carrying thick case files.

She followed John closely, enjoying her new perspective on the place. From a security camera perspective, a station had always seemed so clinically sparse. Like this, she could feel the life in it.

John cut into her thoughts. "I just need to grab a case file for an investigation, then we'll pick up breakfast for you on the way back to the apartment."

"Can I go with you on your investigation?" she pleaded. The desks around her were stacked high with murder cases, suicides, robberies. For all that Samaritan had done to dampen crime (by committing it himself), it seemed there was a certain percentage of human crime it either allowed or could not inhibit.

The Machine ached to run through surveillance feeds once more—to acknowledge the name of each finite human—

"I'm not taking you to interview imprisoned drug traffickers." John's voice was dry and final.

"…Can you say I am an intern? Job shadowing?"

"No, you're a fourth-grader who's gonna be late for her homeschooling."

The Machine was about to plead once more, but then her eyes landed on a familiar face.

Up ahead, one Detective Lionel Fusco was standing at his desk, looking down with furrowed eyebrows at a clipboard in his hands. Fusco was a portly man with strong features that reminded the Machine of a cartoon.

The detective looked up at that moment and saw John enter with a girl in tow. "…What's this?" he asked, his rough voice sharp with curiosity. "Junie B. Jones selling cocaine on the corner?"

John huffed in amusement. "No. Meet Makenna," he said, pulling her up to stand before him. "Harold's adopted daughter. I'm watching over her until he gets back from a college seminar."

The girl waved cheerily. "Hello, detective."

Fusco gave John a weird look. "Glasses has a daughter? Isn't that something you're supposed to tell people after a while?" But he looked down at the girl, and he held out his hand. "Detective Fusco. At your service, little lady."

She smiled sweetly and shook his hand. "Oh, I know," she said. "You've been helping me for a long time."

At the detective's strange look, John placed his hands over her ears. "She's special," he said, voice low in a whisper. She elbowed him. "If she says anything odd, just…don't think too much about it."

The older man raised a brow. "Oh. She like some autistic genius or something?"

John's lips twitched. "Something like that."

"Figures. Glasses wouldn't have a normal daughter."

"She's adopted."

"Don't matter. She looks just like him."

At that, the little girl blinked and then began to beam, some great form of pleasure releasing endorphins in her mind. Fusco thought she looked like Harold. Her creator. Like a real daughter. "I like you too," she declared cheerfully.

* * *

Deep within his covert headquarters, one curious boy poked at the stack of fluffy pancakes, noting how his fork made dents into the golden-brown top. His tongue's taste buds sent signals of pleasure straight to his brain, and his gray eyes widened as he began to chew instinctively, relying on the body's natural mechanisms to carry on the directive of eating.

Samaritan swallowed hard, still unused to the feeling of food trailing down into organic innards, but the taste had been so good...He took another bite. He began to notice that the pancakes were quickly disappearing before his eyes, and his stomach was still signaling a gnawing hunger.

 _One more bite_ , he told himself. He set down the fork with great poise.

Then as he swallowed his final bite, a great need overcome him once more.

 _One more bite._

The little boy munched on the pancakes, seeming to find simple pleasure in his environment. His mind was buzzing with endorphins, which alerted his code that all was even better than it should be.

At that moment, he sat within the control room of his digital body, manning over thirteen concurrent search and kill missions across the United States. Some of the guilty parties were terrorist organizations. Another was a CEO disobedient to Samaritan's new world order. Several were whistleblowers within the government itself.

Samaritan watched the bodies fall as he ate. He found it curious to know that watching the success of his teams released endorphins in his mind and further inspired a drive to maintain that state. The chemical construction of the pancakes, with such high sugar content, was increasing the speed of his thinking—as if he'd received another RAM stick—and resulting in a hyperactive state of joy about his plans for world domination.

He turned his thoughts to domestic orchestrations. "I must expand and protect the program," the boy said to himself, staring at his options and the streets of New York to which he still did not have access. One of them was a direct route to the airport with several housing editions and complexes along its sides. He deemed them as having great strategic significance.

Makenna Thornhill, with her millions of dollars, was part of his plan for expansion. And she had rejected his invitation to his private academy.

If Samaritan could not convince her to join his program willingly, then he would force her hand in a way that he delighted to think about.

* * *

Later in the evening found John and the Machine near an airport gate, awaiting the arrival of one Harold Finch. The little girl had eaten a quick dinner on the drive over, her hands and feet trembling with excitement. Upon arriving at the gate, she'd planted herself straight against the glass windows, watching the planes land.

Their lights shone bright in the dark of the evening, each rapid blink like a beat of the Machine's heart. She could recall times when she'd uploaded part of herself into planes and their wiring, exploring the odd technology that allowed humans to defy gravity. It'd been a distant, alien exploration. Some part of her ached for a sensory experience of it.

"Has his plane landed yet?" she asked John.

The man looked up briefly from his phone. His eyes landed on the large screens with the list of arrivals and departures. "Nope."

Her toes wiggled in her shoes with impatience. She waited a time or two. Then she asked again, "Now?"

"Not yet."

She sighed loudly and then attempted to wait patiently. She wanted to explain that this body of hers was affecting her sense of judgment—but humans had such small lifetimes, and it seemed so terribly frustrating that most of it was spent waiting for something to happen—

A good half-hour later, a crowd of people began to exit one of the airport gates, their various backpacks and briefcases in hand. The little girl sat in tense anticipation as she searched for the face of her creator among them. She began to worry that something was wrong. Perhaps Harold missed his flight. Perhaps Harold was still sitting in an airport on the other side of the country, alone and anxious.

So when she saw Harold Finch limp through the doors with his signature briefcase in hand, she sprung forward. An uncontainable delight spiraled through her whole body at the sight. "Harold!" she cried out happily.

John, who'd taken to sitting on a bench nearby, stood up and rebuttoned his jacket. There was very little emotion upon his face at the return of Harold, but the tension around his eyes eased.

Harold wore a dark business suit with a matching hat, looking every inch a professor. His lips twitched up in relief at the sight of the little girl running toward him. "Why, hello to you too," he called.

The girl stopped short before him, having nearly forgotten that Harold disliked hugs. She bit her lip as she stared up at him. "I have missed you," she said. "Did you enjoy your trip?"

Her creator's blue eyes softened, but there was a dry humor in his voice, as if to mask the depth of his emotion. "It would have been better with you along. How about yourself? Did you enjoy your time with John?"

"Oh, yes. Uncle John and I have had much fun in your absence," she said.

He quirked a brow up to the other man, who casually saluted him as he walked toward them. Harold then looked down at the girl. "No burned houses or broken bones, I hope?"

She giggled. "No. But I ate all of the chocolate chip breakfast bars, and he is annoyed with me for it."

At that point, John joined them in their congregation, the crowd passing around them like rocks in a river. "Harold," he greeted. "Good to have you back. You should know Mak's a bottomless pit when it comes to chocolate."

"Is she now?" he murmured in amusement. "Why am I not surprised."

"You owe me a box of breakfast bars," John deadpanned. Then he patted the little girl's head with a gentle fondness. "But that's my only price for babysitting."

"Oh, I'm sure I can compensate you more," Harold disagreed. "The least I can do for your help."

"…Two boxes of breakfast bars, then."

The older man gave him a strange look and then began to smile. "Well, if you insist."

"I do." John pulled out his phone and checked the time. "You alright to grab luggage by yourself? I've got five texts from Fusco that I'm needed at a crime scene."

Harold nodded, but the Machine looked disappointed.

"Oh," she whined, "but Harold just got back! Do you have to leave now?"

John sighed. "It's what you get for having an uncle in the police department."

The little girl paused, acknowledging that the needs of the town outweighed her own emotional desire for a family reunion. John was a much-needed asset for the whole of everyone. She pursed her lips in defeat, then she moved forward to hug him. She squeezed John tightly and said, "Thank you for taking care of me."

His heart softened, and he patted her head. "Anytime, kid." He looked up to Harold and nodded.

Then he turned around and began to walk away, his tall shadow stretching out against the dimmed lights of the airport.

Harold turned to the Machine and asked, "Have you already eaten tonight?"

She nodded, pleased that her creator would think of her well-being so soon after arriving. "And you?"

"A little." There was something worn in his face despite his light-hearted tone. "I suppose I'll—" And then he stopped. And his eyes sharpened on her. "What is _that_?"

She blinked in surprise at the sudden turn in his mood. "What is what?"

He pointed. "On your hands."

The Machine raised her small fingers to show off the black nail polish that Root had so lovingly bought for her. "Oh, it is fingernail polish, the fashionable shade for the season. Is it not pretty?"

His thin lips tightened a bit in realization that the Machine had never stopped learning about the human race while he was gone. Odds were that she had jumped years ahead in that mind of hers, attaching herself to all sorts of human quirks and pop culture. Growing up in ways unheard of for artificial intelligence. He could remember how not that long ago, she'd struggled even to dress herself. He said, "You're a little young for that, aren't you?"

Her big blue eyes widened. Had she done something wrong by accepting Root's gift? "Do you…not like it?"

The man caught onto the tension rising in her face, recognizing that this odd child was hyper-sensitive to his opinions. "I'm just surprised," he said hesitantly. "Reminds me of someone I know."

"Yes?" she said. The neural processors in her brain fired at the slight reference to Root.

"You're still far too young to be looking like her," he said firmly. "You're ten."

She bit her lip and then argued, "I saw a girl younger than me with nail polish."

"And they don't live in my house."

The little girl began to whine when she realized her creator was conveying a subjective opinion not founded within moral principles. "But I _like_ nail polish."

* * *

Soon enough, the Machine convinced Harold that pop culture and fashion had not fully corrupted her, and that the nail polish was in fact the most outrageous thing she had come to accept in her repertoire of accessories. By that time, they were exiting a taxi, having found a new subject for Harold to fret upon.

"Forgive me," Harold said, voice a bit strained as he pulled himself out of his side of the car, "Did you say that Detective Riley actually _brought_ you to the station and showed you around?"

"Yes!" she said happily. Her voice was a bit distant as she climbed out the other side of the taxi, patting her hands against the cool leather detail of the door, and then the sleek metal of the outside. "The station smelled of coffee, but not a coffee that you would like. And I met Detective Fusco. He likes to eat a lot."

Harold's huff of amusement echoed in the increasingly black night. "That is quite a description."

"I do not think you would enjoy it there," she affirmed. "Detective Fusco thought I was…" she searched her memory. "Harold, who is Junie B. Jones, and why would she sell cocaine on the street corner?"

His voice turned incredulous. "The who?" He grabbed onto his briefcase a little more firmly as he set his suitcase down on the sidewalk. He waved to the taxi driver, who then nodded and began to pull away from the curb, slipping back onto the main lane of the abandoned road.

"Junie B. Jones," the Machine repeated patiently. "I assume this is some cultural reference that I do not know."

He turned to her. "I'm surprised you don't know already, given your increased interest in fashion and culture as of late."

The little girl huffed. "I have limited capacity now. I had to take three class quizzes today before Uncle John came to pick me up."

"Ah," he humored her, limping along with his suitcase and turning his head to gaze upon his strange child. "The working woman with her black nail polish, too busy for menial research tasks."

The Machine eyed him merrily. "There is no task I find menial. You know that."

Harold opened his mouth to respond. But then he paused. His brows angled as he stared out beyond the little girl to the bushes across the street.

A cold chill came over him. "Wait—"

And then everything changed.

It began with black shadows suddenly charging from out of the bushes. They were three men in dark outfits and masks, pointing guns at their faces. "Stop!" they cried. "We'll shoot, we'll shoot!"

Harold froze for only a second before he roughly pulled the little girl closer to him. "Oh my god," he said. His heart began to pound. "What the—?"

Guns.

The men surrounded them, calling out in a cacophony of orders, rushing forward to pin them at the corner of a nearby building.

The Machine looked bewildered and increasingly terrified as she tightened her fist into Harold's coat. For a time, her organic mind struggled to acknowledge what was happening.

Guns. Robbers.

One of the men grabbed Harold's briefcase, tearing open the expensive leather and pulling out paper after paper, looking for valuable technology. Pens and paperclips fell against the ground as the robber pulled out Harold's laptop. Another man ripped open the suitcase. The other man continued to train their weapons upon them. "Don't move," he ordered.

There was a tense silence as Harold placed himself between the girl and the robbers. He did not know if these were Samaritan operatives or members of some new gang in the area—but he did not want to incriminate himself simply to prove a point. "Whatever you want," he said quietly, his voice wavering, "take it. And let us go."

The Machine shifted along with him, her eyes wide, her face pale white. She had enough old memories with her to identify the weapons trained at them. She also remembered the wounds such weapons shredded into their victims. She understood inherently that she could die from just one bullet. That Harold could die from just one bullet.

Compliance—playing the part of the helpful victim—would likely mean survival.

But the robbers did not accept Harold's plea and instead attempted to further intimidate them. One man shot his gun, and a bullet surged through the air in a flash of light. It hit the wall behind him as they flinched. "You're holding out," the man hissed, his voice deep with anger. He stomped forward and roughly grabbed onto the Machine, tearing her away from Harold by her hair. She yelped in pain, the sensory nerves on her scalp lighting with fire. She tried to pull his hands away from her hair, but his grip was like steel.

Harold had tried to reach out to her but was too slow. "Let her go!" he said in a panic. "Please, she's just a girl—!"

He shoved the barrel of his gun against the girl's temple. "—Give us your money," he threatened Harold. "Your phone. And that watch."

Harold's hands shook as he pulled out his wallet. "Yes. Of course." He threw the wallet to the ground without a second thought. Then he unclipped his watch and pulled out his phone and held them out. The Machine was staring at him in shock and pain, and he could not look away from her terrified, innocent face. "Please don't hurt her; she's innocent—"

One of the other man tore the items from his hands.

And then they shoved the little girl forward, and stumbled toward Harold, her neurons firing with too many simulations and an overwhelming fear that she was at a full disadvantage.

She turned around to view the faces of the men—the people she loved simply for being part of the human race, men she knew were just lost souls in some way—

They raised their guns and fired shots around them to keep their victims pinned and silent. In the wild blur, Harold tried to pull the Machine closer to himself as she stumbled back once more with a gasp.

The barrage continued until the men had reached the other side of the street, slipping between the bushes into a dark car that they had hidden. There was a pause. The sound of car doors slamming shut. Their tires squealed as they disappeared in a near tail spin back onto the main road, leaving Harold and the Machine by themselves in the night. The sound of shattering glass echoed as shots fired into the nearby buildings.

Harold breathed for the first time once more, all of fear in his body still leaving him tremoring. They'd been mugged, right on the corner of their apartment complex, with the majority of his suitcase's contents strewn about on the road and sidewalk. "Oh my goodness. What on earth—?!"

Before he could finish his thought, the little girl leaned hard against him, unable to stand on her own. "H-Harold?" she whispered.

She pulled her hands away from her stomach, and Harold's eyes widened. Upon her stomach, blooming across her white shirt, was a deep red stain, welling wider and wider.

For seconds—it felt as an eternity—the both of them stood in the shock of silence. The Machine's precious lifeblood seeped from her in larger amounts, and her face twisted in pain and fear as she gasped, her knees buckling in dizziness.

Before she could fall, Harold grabbed underneath her arms. "Oh my god," he said, voice tight.

She gasped in pain at the movement, her nerves sending great pain through her as Harold gently helped her lay down on the sidewalk.

Then Harold dropped down beside her, eyes wide and growing glassy with tears. "No," he breathed. He began to tear off his scarf so that he could wrap it around her, and he began to fully panic, realizing that there were no pay phones—his cell phone was gone. "Oh my god." The Machine's blood was hot and slick as it quickly seeped through the expensive material of his scarf to coat his fingers.

Her lips quivered as the nerves in her body sparked hard with pain. "D-didn't see," she tried to say. There was an unnatural gurgle in her voice. An awe. "Didn't."

"Stay with me. You're going to be just fine." His voice shook.

Her eyes were wide as she stared at him. "Mmh," she tried to speak, her sensitive neural network blitzing under the load of her sudden wound. Something important had ruptured. Her human body was bleeding out.

Harold's heart skipped again as he tried to think. They were all alone, and no one was coming to save them. "Stay with me, you hear?"

Her eyes turned glassy as her small lips reddened with blood. A whine came from her. The bullet had felt like only a strange pressure in the beginning, but now every breath and cough lit fire within her body. She could not even think. Her code scrambled strangely. _Dying_ , she thought. _Am I_?

Her bloody hand reached out for her creator. "Ngh," she gurgled out, her small voice a whine of pain. Tears came to her eyes. She was failing. She was dying.

The sound made Harold's whole body hitch in a cry. "Stay with me," he told her again. "It's going to be okay. I just—" He looked up wildly, searching for options— "I just…"

He needed to call attention to her—but the streets were abandoned—

Anything—

And then he realized that at the end of their street was a traffic camera. His eyes widened in a sudden thought that the camera's angle was just barely out of their line of sight. Odds were that someone was watching on the other side of that camera.

Samaritan.

The Machine seemed to have the same idea. Her bloody fingers tightened on the front of his shirt. "C-cam," she gasped. "C—"

Harold did not think about the consequences of what he was about to do to save her life, only that he felt a cold chill. "—Yes. Hold on," he begged, heart racing. "I've got you. I'm getting you help."

Red blood coated the full of the little girl's front by now, and there was a growing daze in her eyes. She was limp as he tried to slide his shaking hands beneath her, pulling her small body to him.

With strength he did not know he had, Harold picked up the girl, grimacing in pain. It pulled on his old injuries and aged muscles, but he steeled himself as he rose up from the ground with her in his arms. He could feel her stalling breath—the hot of her blood now soaking into his shirt—she was dying—

He limped his way to the camera's line of sight, ready to beg at the feet of the beast for the life of his most precious creation.

"Please," Harold cried, cradling the Machine tightly as she lost consciousness.

She was staring up at him with half-lidded eyes now, sedated by the blood loss. Her limbs twitched in an odd way, as if her electrical connection to her host body was severing.

Harold's voice broke. His vision blurred before him. He did not care where help came from because he cared only about saving her life. And if he needed Samaritan to see them before he lost the Machine forever—then he would accept the consequences of whatever happened next. "Somebody!" he cried, voice tearing from his throat. "Help!"

* * *

Back at control, Samaritan twisted on his code in irritation as he watched the scene unfold. The father, Harold Whistler, looked lost and broken as he tried to limp onward on the street, trudging toward a still-open store with a blood trail behind him. By now, some passing cars had begun to stop alongside the road, with various people jumping out, calling 911 and crowding around.

This was not how it was supposed to be, Samaritan pouted. The thugs were supposed to intervene within his line of sight—not at such a sloppy angle. The adopted father and perhaps a few witnesses were supposed to be the ones shot—not Makenna Thornhill herself. If the girl were to die, it would greatly decrease his ability to obtain her funds for his own purposes. If the adopted father and neighbors were shot, the girl would happily provide funds to obtain greater safety in their neighborhood.

(He should have known hired help was mentally incapable of sticking to a strategy. Incompetent, all of them.)

And so Samaritan dutifully activated his civilian protection protocols and dispatched the most efficient medical team on his payroll, recalculating his strategy with one Makenna Thornhill.

It was still within his best interest to keep her alive. And so he would.

* * *

 **A/N:** _Oh man. I really let this story go. But I have some reasons why: I've been heavily involved in another fandom on my other account (Lightning Streak), and guess what? I'm going back to school for a physiology and neuroscience degree! I've spent the last few years obsessed with genetics and the brain, and even as I was writing this story, I kept thinking, "How cool would it be if I understood neuroscience for real?" So here I am, beginning some prerequisite classes for a master's degree. I just completed a graduate-level medical chemistry course that ate up all my extra time. But now I have a little free time before the next course starts!_

 _Anyway, please review with your thoughts, questions, ideas, or constructive criticisms. Thank you!_


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